Watermelon explosion sets the tone as state begins to grill Oscar

PROSECUTOR Gerrie Nel yesterday tore into murder accused Oscar Pistorius’s version of how he opened fire on his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.

“I made a mistake,” Pistorius said in explanation of why he fired four shots into a locked bathroom door early on Valentine’s Day last year.

His defence is that he mistook his girlfriend of three months for an intruder.

“What mistake? Say you killed Reeva Steenkamp... Take responsibility. Say it,” Nel said.

“I am taking responsibility. Yes. I did it. Yes I shot Reeva Steenkamp,” cried Pistorius, as a picture of Steenkamp’s gruesome head injury was shown on courtroom TV screens.

Nel, responding to Pistorius’s remark that he had made a mistake, demanded the Paralympian look at the photograph.

“I don’t need to look at something that torments me. I was there ... I held her ... my hand touched her head.”

Just before showing the photo of Steenkamp’s head wound, the court viewed a video clip of Pistorius firing at a watermelon at a shooting range. The fruit explodes.

“The same happened to Reeva’s head. It exploded,” Nel said.

In the video, a voice can be heard laughing loudly after the watermelon exploded.

A voice then says: “It’s not as soft as brains, but f***, it’s like a zombie stopper.”

A zombie stopper is weapon that can be used to kill zombies, who according to popular science fiction, need to be shot in the head to die.

Pistorius admitted it was him speaking on the video.

“I’m very upset to hear myself saying those words,” he said.

“My comments were distasteful but I was referring to a zombie, not a human being.”

Nel drilled Pistorius on:

•  Discrepancies between Pistorius’s bail affidavit and plea explanation;

•  Pistorius’s apparent adaption of his evidence to suit his version of events; and

•  His failure to remember his intentions at the moment of the shooting.

The discrepancies between his bail affidavit and plea explanation are whether Pistorius physically went outside onto the balcony to bring in the fan and how many fans he brought in.

He initially claimed he went onto the balcony to bring in a fan, but in his plea explanation he says two fans were at the door of the balcony and he never left his bedroom.

Pistorius, under fierce questioning from Nel, said his lawyer Barry Roux had made a mistake on his version of events when he was cross-examining the former investigating officer, Warrant Officer Hilton Botha.

The trial continues. — Additional reporting by Marzanne van den Berg