One Tragic Night (19 page)

The athlete was grateful, but persisted with this version: ‘Thank you Gabi. I appreciate you asking me and I'd like to have things that are positive and open with you instead of hearsay and rubbish. If you could let me know who it is that is spreading stories I'd appreciate it. Let me know if you need anything. Oz.'

Mbele was clearly taken in by Oscar's version of events. ‘Was also worried about this but Werner [Swart – colleague] said someone has the wrong end of the stick here hence we called you too. Don't stress about it, we wouldn't run anything without letting you know. Now focus on the good forget this, we not buying into people's maliciousness! Gab.'

A different public image of Oscar Pistorius was lurking, waiting to emerge. There were hints of it in the reports around his boat accident, murmurs when he stormed out of the radio interview, suggestions of it when there were claims of his promiscuity, and real recognition of its potential following his outburst at the Paralympics. But his poster-boy image still remained intact. Perhaps the South African media chose to ignore the indicators, unwilling to be party to the tarnishing of something so wonderfully successful and patriotic.

Despite the rumblings of negativity, Oscar continued to do much good, reaffirming his public image. He was an ambassador for Laureus, a global charity that promotes social change through sport. He was also an ambassador for the Mineseeker Foundation, which distributes prosthetic limbs to victims of landmines in Africa. In addition, Oscar was on the verge of launching his own new
charity foundation and, just two days before he was arrested, he tweeted about it: ‘In a run up to the launch of my foundation in July, I will give at least 10 kids mobility!'

The future was rich with possibility. He was training hard for a new season of racing, hoping to gain on his success in London in 2012; he was midway through the process of buying a new house in Atholl and moving back to Johannesburg; and sponsorships and endorsements continued to roll in. He had been invited to appear on the Jay Leno show and the Piers Morgan show amongst others; he featured on the covers of various local and international magazines; and he was to be the face of M-Net's February Academy Awards campaign.

Oscar had also fallen madly in love, again. He was smitten and had great plans for the future with his new blonde girlfriend.

But his words to
Sarie
magazine proved to be prophetic. Fame
isn't
that great. It has highlights and lowlights and it was only a matter of time before he was cut down. And the Icarus-like fall was incalculable, devastating, beyond anyone's comprehension – including his own.

It was Valentine's Day and my wife had given me one of those cheesy cards. I was feeling ill and had a nasty cough and a stuffy nose. At about 6:30am I called the news desk at Eyewitness News to discuss my diary for the day with Lynne O'Connor who was reading bulletins that morning. I explained that I was ill and wasn't prepared to be out and about, but promised I'd work on a Tshwane Metro Police report I'd been sitting on for several weeks, so she pulled me off the diary for the day.

But I still had to get my daughter to school, so I continued getting her ready. It was shortly after 7am that I received a call from a police contact at the Cullinan police station.

‘Are you in Silver Woods, at the scene there?' he asked.

‘What scene?' I responded.

It quickly became evident that I should have known what was happening.

‘Oscar has shot someone at his home. Oscar Pistorius.'

‘Shot dead or shot injured?' I asked, needing clarity.

‘No, he shot someone dead. Apparently before five this morning,' he said.

The policeman provided me with the name and number of a captain from the Boschkop police station who was on the scene.

Shit! I thought. I quickly told my wife about what had happened and immediately called the cop on the scene.

‘Good morning, Captain, this is Barry Bateman from Eyewitness News. I understand that there's been a shooting at Oscar Pistorius's home. Can you confirm?' I needed facts fast.

She was clearly nervous. ‘I can't say anything at this stage; the police are still investigating at the scene.'

‘Captain, I understand there has been a shooting. Please confirm whether someone is dead or someone has been injured.'

Her response was ambiguous. ‘I can't say; we're still investigating.'

I ended the call. Although the captain had provided no information she had made it clear that something was happening.

I called the news desk back and explained the situation to O'Connor. It was early, there was no confirmation and we didn't know who the victim was. I asked to speak to sports editor Cindy Poluta.

‘No. Fucking. Ways!' she exclaimed when I broke the news to her. I needed contact numbers and she undertook to text me the cellphone number of Oscar's manager, Peet van Zyl.

Then it occurred to me that I did, in fact, have Oscar's phone number from a job I had done a few years earlier. From my landline I called his cellphone, but the user was unavailable. It was 7:19am.

I rushed outside and loaded my daughter into the car – fatherly duties trump all others. My four-year-old was strapped in and ready when I received the text from Poluta. I immediately called Van Zyl, the athlete's manager. In my best diplomatic and professional ‘please help me, I'm desperate' tone, I explained that I'd heard there'd been a shooting, could he confirm this?

‘All I can confirm is that there has been an incident, but I don't have any details. I am being denied access to Oscar,' Van Zyl said.

It was a mad dash down Atterbury Road to the crèche. The traffic, as it usually is during rush hour, was not sympathetic to my emergency. Neither was the routine of dropping off a child at playschool. Within minutes of stopping at the school, I had unbuckled her car seat, signed her in and kissed my little girl goodbye.

From the school, it was on to the N1 highway and then on the N4 to avoid the traffic down Solomon Mahlangu Drive to the east. The office was still frantically tracking down details and as I navigated morning highway traffic my phone rang. It was O'Connor and she had information. Oscar had shot dead his girlfriend. What's her name?

I remembered seeing Oscar pictured with a woman on the front page of local magazine
Sarie.
As it turned out, the woman in the picture had been Oscar's sister, Aimee, but at the time I thought she was his girlfriend. I knew the man as an athlete but very little about his private life, his hobbies or love life.

A few minutes later O'Connor called back, this time to confirm that
Beeld
newspaper had just tweeted that Oscar had shot dead his girlfriend and that he was apparently telling the police he had mistaken her for a burglar.

O'Connor wanted to go live on air. Being just minutes from Oscar's house, I gave her the green light.

I was the first of the media to arrive at the luxury estate, which like most had two entrances: one for residents and another for visitors. I tried my luck and joined the queue of about three cars to get in.

A guard with a clipboard approached the car. ‘Where are you going?' he asked.

I wasn't going to lie. ‘I'm going to Oscar Pistorius's house.'

‘Who are you?'

‘I'm a reporter.'

The guard told me management wasn't allowing anyone except the police and authorised people into the complex. So I parked my car near the entrance, slid my driver's seat back to convert it into an office and started working. As I looked up I spotted
Beeld
reporter Fanie van Rooyen – who had minutes earlier broken the story with the tweet – and photographer Alet Pretorius. A polite wave and a smile were all time allowed as I started throwing together a few lines for the breaking news at the half-hour bulletin.

It was mere minutes before the studio called to do the live crossing, and while I was holding to cross into the bulletin, at 8.32am, I tweeted:

Within minutes of going live, reporting that Oscar had apparently shot dead his girlfriend, my phone started ringing. Fellow hacks on their way to the scene wanted to confirm the address. Each call was a quick exchange of details, and it wasn't long before the entrance to the luxury estate was swarming with journalists from just about every South African publication.

‘What have your contacts told you?' was the question being thrown around. ‘The cops are saying fuck all,' was the most frequent response.

My silver Honda Jazz, parked closest to the entrance, had become a gathering point, the communal car to lean on and from which to listen to the radio. We waited. As the breaking news story gathered momentum, we needed official confirmation, a statement, a briefing – anything.

The boom at the exit of the terracotta, faux-rock Tuscan complex rose steadily to allow the white mortuary van to drive through. The van bore the distinctive yellow-and-blue reflector tape, with the stencilled lettering of the Gauteng Forensic Pathology Services running across its flank. In the back lay Reeva Steenkamp's body. It was close to 9am. Journalists were still gathering at the estate's main gate as the mortuary vehicle drove out, an indication of how late reporters were to get to the story. In South Africa, it is not uncommon for the dead to lie at a crime scene for hours as teams of forensic experts comb the area for clues, take pictures and document evidence.

Reporters milled around outside the estate, filing reports with the little information they had gathered from unofficial sources. Just before 11am, a large convoy of police and private vehicles sped out of the complex. Journalists scrambled to establish whether Oscar Pistorius was in one of the cars in the cavalcade and some gave chase, others remaining behind to await a briefing from the police.

Before long several police officers from the South African Police Service (SAPS) strode out to the waiting cameras and microphones to address the world's media. Responsibility for communication of this matter had been escalated from police station level – Boschkop – to Gauteng provincial level.

Brigadier Denise Beukes, her blonde hair neatly tucked away under a SAPS-issue cap and her lipstick pristine, led the briefing. She was composed and measured, selecting her words carefully as she delivered her statement:

Her comments took most journalists by surprise and, for the first time, the story began to shift. The only version until that point had been that Oscar had mistaken Reeva for an intruder and that the shooting had been a terrible mistake. Initial reports even suggested that Reeva had been sneaking into his house to surprise him for Valentine's Day. Now it appeared the scenario could be very different.

To the surprise of some reporters who had gathered, Beukes took questions. The first enquiry was whether or not she could identify the deceased?

‘At this stage the challenge that we've got is that her family has not identified her and so until her family has identified her, we're not at liberty to give her name to the media, unfortunately,' Beukes explained, using her hands for extra emphasis.