Try as one might, it seems impossible to escape from the media's fascination with Oscar Pistorius. We are confronted with staged pictures of him appearing in court and looking sad; anyone with a heart would be on his side, wouldn't they ?
Perhaps my problem is that I don't have a heart and prefer to try to draw conclusions from facts. One fact in this case is that the South African police have put together a pretty poor argument; another is that the media is firmly on the side of poor, dear Oscar. What is undeniable and still to be determined is what really happened. What is going on at the moment is, after all, only a hearing to decide whether or not Pistorius should be granted bail.
The few facts I've been able to garner are these. Pistorius owned, quite legally, a hand gun and lived in a securely guarded and gated estate. According to him, immediately before the incident in question, he was in bed with his girlfriend and he rose on hearing a noise. Thinking he was being burgled, he 'walked' to the bathroom without attaching his prosthetic legs and fired several shots through the locked door of the toilet. He then returned to the bedroom where he discovered that his girlfriend was not in bed and, for the first time, realised that it may have been her in the toilet. In a panic, he went back to the bathroom and broke down the toilet door with an implement of some sort, possibly a cricket bat.
Exactly how one doesn't realise that their partner isn't in bed with them is the first question. If Pistorius did believe there was a burglar in the house, wouldn't he have tried to wake the woman and get her to safety before trying to tackle the intruder ? Why would a burglar have been in his bathroom or been locked in his toilet ? Did he not shout any sort of warning to his victim before firing ? If the supposed intruder was locked in the toilet, wouldn't it make sense to have called for help before firing; after all, Pistorius still had the gun and the intruder was contained. How would a burglar have entered the securely guarded property and had there been any other burglaries on the estate ?
What we've heard so far is mere window dressing; the real story is yet to come.
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