Oscar consulting with his Lawyer, Roux. (Photo: Times Live)
The high profile court case which is the Murder trial of star paralympian, Oscar Pistorius continued today at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria amid reports from internet monitoring company, DDI that the case had become bigger than the 2014 FIFA Soccer World Cup that is going to be hosted by Brazil.
This is day seven of the trial and it opened with the pathologist, Gert Saayman giving evidence and his cross-examination by defence attorney, Roux.
In giving evidence, Professor Saayman concentrated for some time on the contents of Reeva’s stomach and it’s implication. He indicated that the food found in the victim’s stomach was mainly vegetable matter with some hint of whitish cheese-like material. He went on to explain that, in his opinion, the food indicated that it had been consumed not more than two hours prior to her demise, which effectively scatters Oscar’s statement that they had gone to bed at ten in the evening.
He went further and explained that a lot of factors came into play in determining how long the food can stay in the stomach. These, he pointed out, include the type and volume of food consumed among other things. He was easily able to parry Roux’s cross examination and informed the court that he was drawing his conclusions from the many years of experience as well as the numerous autopsies he had conducted.
The trial then moved on to another of the prosecution’s witnesses, Darren Fresco, who is a friend of Oscar as well as Reeva. He spoke mainly about the incident when Oscar had asked to have his gun in the Tasha’s restaurant at the Melrose Arch. According to him, when he handed Oscar the gun, he had informed him that it was ‘one up’, meaning that it had a bullet in the chamber.
While his friend watched passively, Darren spoke about the gun going off into the floor of the eatery and about Oscar asking him to take the blame for shooting the gun. He went on to speak about the incident when they were stopped by traffic police for having the wrong number plates. He said that some time after they had been stopped by the police, out of the blue, Oscar just shot a bullet through the sun roof of their car.
Asked about the discrepancies in his statement, Fresco said that he had not left anything out of his statement deliberately. There were many instances when he could not respond to the defence attorney’s questions and would say he could not remember. As usual, at the end of it all, Roux seems to have achieved what he set out to do; that is, to poke gaping holes in the testimonies of state witnesses.
