Pretoria: A photograph of Oscar Pistorius’ blood stained prosthetic legs was used by his chief defense lawyer on Thursday to attempt to show that the athlete was wearing them, as he says, when he broke down a toilet door with a cricket bat to get to the girlfriend he fatally shot.
The image, showing the prosthetic limbs with white socks and stained with Reeva Steenkamp’s blood up to the knee, was displayed by lawyer Barry Roux on a TV monitor at Pistorius’ murder trial. Roux was trying to reinforce the Olympian’s story that he shot the model by mistake on Valentine’s Day last year and then desperately broke through a locked toilet door to help her.
The prosecution has attempted to cast doubt on parts of Pistorius’ story, including, specifically, that he was wearing his legs when he broke through the toilet door with his bat. Roux cross-examined a police forensics expert for a second day in the Pretoria courtroom, and also challenged Col. J G Vermeulen’s analysis of a bullet-marked toilet door that was removed from the bathroom at Pistorius’ home.
