One Tragic Night (87 page)

The athlete also confirmed that that morning he was in ‘full combat recon mode', in which he is trained to ‘go and seek the perceived threat'. ‘That is what I tried to do. I did not have my prosthetic legs on, like I had when I had been trained,' he said.

Being on his stumps meant Oscar could not flee the bedroom, as Nel had suggested. ‘My Lady, I have very, very limited mobility on my stumps on a hard surface like tiles,' he said. It was important for the state to try to get to exactly what Oscar meant when he said ‘before I knew it, I had fired four shots at the door' and why he opened fire, so the prosecutor returned to this question on several occasions throughout the cross-examination.

Oscar provided several different answers and versions to the questions related to what happened in the bathroom in those seconds leading up to the shots. Various exchanges between Nel and Oscar unfolded as follows:

[…]

On several occasions Oscar said he genuinely believed his life was in danger, that he was going to be attacked and that he was protecting Reeva. In the bail application Oscar stated, ‘I heard movement inside the toilet,' which precipitated him firing the shots. Nel wanted to know exactly what this movement or sound was that prompted him to open fire. This noise would be described later by one of the athlete's expert witnesses as the ‘third startle' and what prompted him to respond by pulling the trigger:

The problem with Oscar's version here was that the magazine rack was found next to the toilet against the back wall. According to Mangena's reconstruction of what took place behind the door, Reeva fell on top of the magazine rack – it did not move before the shots. Both the defence experts – Dixon and Wolmarans – confirmed the location of the rack by highlighting a clean area where there was no blood present caused by one of the legs of the rack pressing against the floor around which blood had pooled. In other words, if you lifted the rack, there would be no blood where its foot had rested on the floor, indicating that it had not been moved prior to the gunshots and the victim bleeding.

Pointing at a photograph of the scene, Oscar said he found Reeva where the magazine rack was in the picture, indicating that that rack itself was to the far right of the cubicle, positioned close to the wall, when he broke through the door.

While Oscar could merely explain what he experienced and how he perceived certain events on the morning of the shooting, it was going to be up to his defence experts to explain his thinking and what led him to that point when he pulled the trigger. It was the introduction of evidence related to a possible psychiatric disorder that took the proceedings in an unexpected new direction.

State social worker Yvette van Schalkwyk was never part of the defence strategy. But when she came knocking on their door on the eve of election day, they resolved to put her in the witness box a mere two days later. This took many observers by surprise. Van Schalkwyk in fact asked to testify after she had heard negative things said about Oscar in the media and she wanted to correct the impression. At the time, there had been speculation in the press that he had gone for acting lessons – a claim slammed by his PR agent. Roux explained he called the witness because the state questioned the sincerity of the accused.

Van Schalkwyk, a social worker and probation officer, was the state employee assigned by the Magistrate's Court to monitor Oscar's behaviour during his bail application and offer him emotional support. She told the court she was ‘upset' by what she had read about the accused and wanted to tell her version of what she had observed a year earlier in the days after the shooting. ‘What upset me was the fact that they said he had acting training, he just put on a show, started crying when it was needed. That upset me,' she said.

The social worker described the accused as she observed him in the holding cells at the Pretoria Magistrate's Court as a man who was ‘heartbroken about the loss. He cried; he was in mourning; he suffered emotionally. He was very sorry about the loss, especially for her parents. The suffering they are going through.'

The court appointed Van Schalkwyk as Oscar's probation officer when he was released and ordered her to compile weekly reports on his well-being, more specifically on his mental health and emotional state. She compiled four such reports until the bail conditions were successfully appealed.

Van Schalkwyk reported that Oscar was undergoing intensive therapy with psychologist Lore Hartzenberg to help him deal with trauma and anxiety. She
concluded: ‘The accused is very heartbroken and he still has a lot of emotions and stress. But this are all in context with the incident that happened. His emotional stress are dealt with by the psychologist.'

By week four she reported that Oscar was slowly improving and coping with the situation, and meeting regularly with Hartzenberg. But, by Van Schalkwyk's own admission, her reliability as a witness in this case was called into question.

Nel argued that the extreme emotional state the social worker observed was consistent with someone who had been traumatised by the killing and then being arrested and hauled off to court. She did not have the experience to dispute the prosecutor's claim. Nel focused on what the accused did not say in those holding cells – he did not say, ‘I'm sorry, I did it.'

Professor Merryll Vorster sports short brown hair with hints of grey and sharp facial features. As a registered forensic psychiatrist, she has worked for decades at state mental institutions and at the time of the trial was associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of the Witwatersrand. She is no stranger to the courtroom and is regularly called to testify in cases through her private medico-legal practice. She is known to most in the legal fraternity, who all have a ‘Merryll story' to offer. Vorster's evidence and diagnosis of Oscar set the trial in an unexpected direction that had not been anticipated by the defence.

When, at the request of the defence, Vorster evaluated Oscar in May 2014, she consulted not only the report of psychologist Richard Holmes dated 18 February
2014, but also the Milpark Hospital medical records following the 2009 boat accident and the affidavits from his friend Justin Divaris and Divaris's girlfriend Samantha Greyvenstein, as well as that of Oscar's cousin Graham Binge. Vorster also interviewed Oscar's brother Carl, sister Aimee, his manager Peet van Zyl and coach Ampie Louw, as well as his maternal aunt – his mother's sister – Dianne Binge.

Vorster said the amputation of Oscar's limbs when he was just 11 months old, at a pre-language stage of his life, would have been interpreted by the child as traumatic assault – because he was too young to communicate, he would not have been able to comprehend and understand the type of procedure and the associated pain.

The accused was then fitted with prosthetic limbs and was encouraged to live a normal life and was supported by his family, but Vorster said this meant Oscar was never able to allow himself to be seen as disabled and was encouraged to see himself as normal.

Oscar's mother Sheila became his primary attachment figure, but when Oscar was six she divorced Oscar's father Henke.

Vorster stated that growing up and going through school Oscar appeared to lead a relatively normal life; although he was teased on occasion, he was able to stand up for himself or alternatively had Carl there to defend him. At the age of 15, the death of Oscar's mother led to an increase in his anxiety levels, and what he described as a very stressful period in his life.

The psychiatrist found that from about a year later the young athlete's career took off, until the age of 21 when he cut ties with his father Henke. That divide was still clearly evident during the bail application and later during the trial – Henke remained absent from court right until closing arguments.

Vorster said Oscar started spending significant amounts of time overseas, but became anxious about reports of the high levels of crime back home in South Africa, so he bought a firearm for his own protection.

She believed that Oscar had developed an anxiety disorder, which he worked hard to try to control by managing external factors such as his environment and being well-prepared for events. ‘In a way, his strict training regime and his diet helped him to alleviate his levels of anxiety. On the other hand, as he became more and more exposed to being famous and having media attention, he would have had to prepare more and more to not embarrass himself in any way and in that way, to manage his levels of anxiety,' she said.