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Mon Dec 02, 2019 5:42 am
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PRETORIA, South Africa -- As the girlfriend he shot in the head lay dead or dying in his home, a weeping, praying Oscar Pistorius knelt at her side and struggled in vain to help her breathe by holding two fingers in her clenched mouth, a witness testified Thursday at the double-amputee runners murder trial. NCAA Jerseys . "I shot her. I thought she was a burglar. I shot her," radiologist Johan Stipp, a neighbour, recalled Pistorius saying. The worried neighbour had entered Pistorius home after hearing screams. By that time, the celebrated athlete had carried Reeva Steenkamps bloodied body downstairs following the fatal nighttime shooting in his bathroom. A few minutes after he arrived, Stipp said, Pistorius went back upstairs -- the area where he had shot the 29-year-old model -- and returned. At that point, Stipp said he was concerned that the gun used in the shooting had not been recovered and that a distraught Pistorius was going to harm himself. The testimony did not address what Pistorius did when he went upstairs. Stipps account in a Pretoria court was the first detailed, public description of the immediate aftermath of the shooting in the pre-dawn hours of Feb. 14 last year. Pistorius is charged with premeditated murder after shooting Steenkamp three times out of four shots through the toilet door, with prosecutors trying to build a case that the Olympian intentionally killed Steenkamp after a loud argument. At his bail hearing last year, Pistorius said in a statement read by his lawyer that after he realized he had shot Steenkamp, thinking mistakenly that she was an intruder, he pulled on his prosthetic legs and tried to kick down the toilet door. He said he finally gave up and bashed the door in with a cricket bat. Inside, he said he found Steenkamp, slumped over but still alive. He said he lifted her body and carried her downstairs to seek medical help. On Thursday, as Stipp recalled the sometimes grisly details through questioning by the prosecutor, Pistorius bent forward on the wooden court bench and put his hand over his face. Clutching what appeared to be black rosary beads, Pistorius then moved his hands to cover both ears as Stipp described the scene at the athletes villa sometime after 3 a.m. Pistorius stayed that way for a while in the courtroom, even when one of his lawyers reached back and touched him on the head in an apparent gesture of reassurance. "Oscar was crying all the time," Stipp continued. "He was praying to God, Please let her live." "Oscar said he would dedicate "his life and her life to God" if she would live, Stipp said. The chief defence lawyer, Barry Roux, asked Stipp if he thought Pistorius emotions as the runner knelt next to Steenkamp were genuine. Stipp said he thought they were. "He looked sincere to me," Stipp said of observing Pistorius minutes after hed fatally shot his girlfriend. "He was crying. There were tears on his face." Prosecutors contend that a person who has just killed someone might immediately feel remorse. Stipp, whose house is behind Pistorius, said he had initially been woken by what he described as a womans screams. After calling private security at the gated community, he said he decided he should go and try to help. When he arrived at Pistorius home, he saw that two other responders were already there -- a man standing outside and a woman near the front door as he walked in. He said he rushed right past them and went inside to see if he could be of assistance. "At the bottom of the stairs ... there was a lady lying on her back on the floor," Stipp said of his first observations. "I went near her and as I bent down, I also noticed a man on the left kneeling by her side. He had his left hand on her right groin, and his right hand, the second and third fingers in her mouth." "It was obvious that she was mortally wounded," Stipp said. "She had no pulse in the neck, she had no peripheral pulse. She had no breathing movements that she made." As a radiologist, Stipp is a medical doctor with years of study, and he said he used his expertise to try to save the woman -- even though he was fairly sure his efforts would be in vain. He noticed a wound in the womans right thigh, in her upper arm and in the right side of the head, and there was brain tissue around the skull. Stipp didnt know the man was Pistorius until later, he said. He had mistakenly thought Pistorius lived in a different house in the gated community. Echoing the assertions of two other state witnesses in the trial, Stipp also maintained that he heard a womans screams before and around the time of the gunshots. That is a significant issue in the case. Prosecutors say there was a fight between Pistorius and Steenkamp and that she was screaming before and perhaps during the shooting. Pistorius says he was the only one to scream, mainly after realizing hed shot his girlfriend by mistake. Roux, the defence lawyer, described the head wound as "terrible, serious, devastating," arguing that Steenkamp could not have screamed during the gunfire because she would not have been able to. "What Im saying to you, when you heard screams, it could not have been the deceased," Roux said to Stipp. "Its medically impossible." It is unclear, however, which of the four shots struck Steenkamps head. NCAA Jerseys For Sale . Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema scored two goals each Wednesday night in a 6-1 rout of Schalke in the first leg of their second-round matchup. "We played a very, very good match," Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti said. "We got well into the match, scored two early goals and that opened the game and left us able to counter and to use the speed of our players. Authentic NCAA Jerseys . -- Peyton Manning is the only player in this Super Bowl who has won the big game. https://www.cheapncaajerseysjustwholesale.com/ . The Redblacks host the Hamilton Tiger-Cats (7-9) Friday night in their last home game of the year and as of Thursday afternoon, the team was anticipating a ninth consecutive sellout. You can watch all the action on TSN1, TSN3, TSN4, and TSN5 beginning at 7:30pm et/4:30pm pt.MADRID - Manchester United midfielder Ander Herrera and Atletico Madrid captain Gabriel Gabi Fernandez were named Monday as suspects in a match-fixing probe launched by Spains state prosecutor.They were identified when the prosecutor issued an official complaint and asked the judiciary to investigate officials and players linked to football clubs Zaragoza and Levante in May 2011.The match that was allegedly fixed, in round 30 of the 2010-2011 Spanish league program, was played on May 21, 2011.The Anti-Corruption branch of the prosecutors office issued a writ saying Zaragoza paid 965,000 euros ($1,198,500) to Levante players so they would allow the Zaragoza team to win.Five Zaragoza officials, including current Japan coach Javier Aguirre, and 18 players, including Fernandez and Herrera, were named and alleged to have been involved in sports fraud.Agapito Iglesias, then president of Zaragoza is named, as is the club itself.The writ also names 18 players who were at Levante at the time, including Juan Francisco Juanfran Garcia who still plays at the club. College Football Jerseys. .The prosecutor lists payments, dates and even specific bank accounts into which alleged bribes were paid.According to the writ, Gabi scored twice — in the 38th and 73rd minutes — and Christian Stuani pulled one back for Levante in the 80th, giving Zaragoza victory as had been allegedly agreed. That win saved Zaragoza from relegation.Match-fixing is a crime that can, in Spain, lead to prison sentences for individuals, and clubs can be banned from all official competitions.The prosecutor has asked the courts to probe those named after summoning players for questioning on Oct. 3.Spanish league president Javier Tebas in June 2013 included the Levante vs. Zaragoza match in a list of nine matches he said his organization was investigating for match-fixing.The league in May 2013 opened a separate probe into Deportivo La Corunas 4-0 win at Levante a month earlier — a second Levante match to come under scrutiny.Levante still plays in the top flight, but Zaragoza was relegated to the second division in 2013. ' ' ' |
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