Pretoria: 'Non-stop shouting' was heard coming from Oscar Pistorius's home before his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was shot dead, his bail hearing was told today.
Prosecutor Gerrie Nel said the prosecution team has a witness who heard the shouting between 2am and 3am.
The details were revealed as the second day of the 26-year-old athlete's bail hearing began at Pretoria Magistrates' Court where he faces a charge of premeditated murder.
This morning investigating officer Hilton Botha took the stand and said he arrived at his upscale Pretoria house at about 4.15am last Thursday and found 'the deceased lying at the bottom of the stairs.'
He said Miss Steenkamp had already been declared dead by medics and 'she had on white shorts and black vest. She was covered in towels.'
Mr Botha said that in the bedroom an overnight bag was on a couch on the left hand side of the bed and there were also slippers.
He detailed that on the shower mat lay a firearm and an iPhone 4 and iPhone - he said the phones had not been used to make calls that morning.
Gerrie Nel, the chief prosecutor asked Mr Botha if shots were fired directly at the toilet basin and he agreed.
'If you fire straight at the door, you miss the toilet,' he explained.
He said: 'Four shots fired, four cartridges. We think the cricket bat was used to break down the toilet door.'
Pistorius sobbed, with his head lowered as she explained that he was present during the post-mortem and three entrance wounds were found from the bullets - the right side of head Miss Steenkamp's head - hitting her ear, her right elbow - which resulted in a broken arm - and her hip.
The investigating officer explained that when police asked for the safes in Pistorius' home to be opened they found they found a box of .38 calibre ammunition rounds in the bedroom safe for which Pistorius not a licence holder.
Mr Botha opposed bail stating: 'Pistorius could be a flight risk. It's a serious crime, a serious matter.'
Discussing extradition he said: 'We don't want another Dewani to happen. We're still waiting to get him back in the country.'
He was referring to Shrien Dewani' who is wanted in South Africa over the honeymoon murder of his wife in November 2010, but is now fighting extradition in Britain.
Yesterday global sporting star said he mistook Reeva Steenkamp for an intruder and shot her through the locked door of a toilet in his mansion home.
He said he thought she was in his bed when he opened fire. ‘I kicked the door open, I tried to help her but she died in my arms,’ he said in his first account of what happened
He Pistorius sobbed uncontrollably as Barry Roux, one of South Africa’s leading defence lawyers, read the athlete’s statement to Pretoria magistrate Desmond Nair, asking that he be allowed bail.
The hushed court also heard a statement from a close friend of Miss Steenkamp who said the model and law graduate had told her ‘she would marry Oscar Pistorius if he asked her. She said he was intense but she loved him’. He treated her ‘like gold’.
Prosecutor Gerrie Nel painted a very different version of the events in the early hours of Valentine’s Day. He said Pistorius had shot his cowering girlfriend in cold blood. ‘She couldn’t go anywhere,’ Mr Nel said. ‘It must have been horrific.’
As Pistorius's relatives supported him in court, the distraught family of Miss Steenkamp attended her funeral in Port Elizabeth.
Her brother Adam said that her death had 'left space missing inside all of the people that she knew.'
But there was also anger. Gavin Venter, an ex-jockey who worked for Reeva's father, called for the harshest of sentences for Pistorius.
In court the prosecutor told the bail hearing the couple had had a shouting match and Miss Steenkamp fled to the bathroom and locked herself in. She was an ‘unarmed, innocent woman’. But Mr Roux insisted there was no evidence to substantiate a murder charge. ‘There is no concession this is a murder,’ he said.
It was theme underlined by Pistorius in his affidavit. He said: ‘I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated murder because… I had no intention to kill my girlfriend.’
He said on the evening of February 13 they had decided to stay in and had gone to bed.
‘I’m acutely aware of people gaining entries to homes to commit crime, I’ve received death threats. I sleep with my 9mm under my bed.’ He said he heard a noise in the bathroom after getting up to close a sliding door. ‘I was scared and didn’t switch on the light.
