Originally published on March 6, 2014
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One of the first people on the scene after South African star athlete Oscar Pistorius shot girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp told the trial Pistorius begged him to save her life.
Radiologist Johan Stipp, Pistorius' neighbour, recalled being awakened by three loud bangs, then hearing a female voice scream three or four times. While trying to call security, he heard another three loud bangs. Moments later, he heard a male voice shout: "Help! Help! Help!"
When security arrived, Stipp sent them toward Pistorius' house before heading there himself. There, he saw a woman lying at the bottom of the stairs. A man, who Stipp at the time did not realize was Pistorius, was kneeling by her side.
"'I shot her,'" Stipp says he heard the man say. "'I thought she was a burglar, and I shot her.'"
As Stipp, a doctor, checked Steenkamp for signs of life, Pistorius, he says, begged him to save her, and promised to dedicate his life to God if she lived.
"He definitely wanted her to live," said Stipp. "He looked sincere to me. He had tears on his face."
Stipp found that Steenkamp had no pulse and appeared to be mortally wounded. Stipp said there was a wound in the right side of her head and brain tissue in her hair. He also noticed wounds in her right thigh and upper arm.
Pistorius appeared to break down during Stipp's graphic testimony, bending over and clutching his head.
The prosecution says Pistorius, now 27, deliberately shot model and reality TV star Steenkamp, then 29, after the pair had an argument and she locked herself in the toilet. Pistorius said he fired in self-defence after he mistook her for a home intruder who had entered through the bathroom window.
The Olympic and Paralympic track star was born without fibulae in both legs, which were amputated halfway between the knees and ankles when he was 11 months old. In 2003 he shattered his knee while playing rugby on prosthetic limbs and took up running while undergoing rehabilitation.
He reached the 2012 Olympic 400-metre semi-final running on carbon-fibre "blades", for which he was given the nickname "Bladerunner".
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