REEVA Steenkamp had been cowering with her arms over her head when hit by gunshots fired by her boyfriend Oscar Pistorius.
This was the picture painted yesterday by police ballistics expert Captain Christiaan Mangena in the Pretoria High Court, where the Paralympian athlete is on trial for murder.
“After that, it is my opinion, she then just dropped to the right-hand side with her head on the toilet seat,” he said.
Another shot missed Steenkamp and hit the wall.
Steenkamp’s mother, June, did not leave the court as she did the two previous days.
Mangena said Pistorius’s contention that he fired four shots in quick succession – two so-called double taps – could not be true.
He said the wounds would then be very close together and Steenkamp would not have had the chance to fall first.
“There was a break between the first shot and the second. I can’t say how long, but there was a break. It’s possible that the next three shots were in quick succession,” he said.
Mangena said Pistorius was “most likely” not wearing his prosthetic legs when he fired the shots, which accords with Pistorius’s version that he was on his stumps.
Mangena was a confident figure in the dock and didn’t sway from his conclusions during cross-examination by defence advocate Barry Roux.
Mangena’s reconstruction of how Steenkamp was wounded was supported by blood spatter expert Lieutenant-Colonel Ian van der Nest.
Van der Nest said the blood stains in the house could be explained by Pistorius carrying a bleeding Steenkamp through the house and down the stairs.
People in the courtroom also saw a glimpse of the web browsing history on one of two iPads found in the house, when Colonel Michael Sales testified that he had downloaded the information from the iPads.
The view on screen in the courtroom showed some of the web pages visited after 6pm on an iPad 3 on February 13 last year.
It included a number of pages on car sales website Autotrader and, around 6.30pm, a “free mobile porn” site and a pornography-related Google search.
The last site visited, at 9.19pm, was a Google image search for the Morgan Aeromax, a limited edition sports car.
The case continues on Monday, after prosecutor Gerrie Nel asked the court for a postponement for time to consult with witnesses.
Nel said the state was likely to close its case next week, but may call four or five more state witnesses before doing so.
Reeva’s last moments revealed
This was the picture painted yesterday by police ballistics expert Captain Christiaan Mangena in the Pretoria High Court, where the Paralympian athlete is on trial for murder.
“After that, it is my opinion, she then just dropped to the right-hand side with her head on the toilet seat,” he said.
Another shot missed Steenkamp and hit the wall.
Steenkamp’s mother, June, did not leave the court as she did the two previous days.
Mangena said Pistorius’s contention that he fired four shots in quick succession – two so-called double taps – could not be true.
He said the wounds would then be very close together and Steenkamp would not have had the chance to fall first.
“There was a break between the first shot and the second. I can’t say how long, but there was a break. It’s possible that the next three shots were in quick succession,” he said.
Mangena said Pistorius was “most likely” not wearing his prosthetic legs when he fired the shots, which accords with Pistorius’s version that he was on his stumps.
Mangena was a confident figure in the dock and didn’t sway from his conclusions during cross-examination by defence advocate Barry Roux.
Mangena’s reconstruction of how Steenkamp was wounded was supported by blood spatter expert Lieutenant-Colonel Ian van der Nest.
Van der Nest said the blood stains in the house could be explained by Pistorius carrying a bleeding Steenkamp through the house and down the stairs.
People in the courtroom also saw a glimpse of the web browsing history on one of two iPads found in the house, when Colonel Michael Sales testified that he had downloaded the information from the iPads.
The view on screen in the courtroom showed some of the web pages visited after 6pm on an iPad 3 on February 13 last year.
It included a number of pages on car sales website Autotrader and, around 6.30pm, a “free mobile porn” site and a pornography-related Google search.
The last site visited, at 9.19pm, was a Google image search for the Morgan Aeromax, a limited edition sports car.
The case continues on Monday, after prosecutor Gerrie Nel asked the court for a postponement for time to consult with witnesses.
Nel said the state was likely to close its case next week, but may call four or five more state witnesses before doing so.
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