Oscar: An Accident Waiting to Happen (7 page)

Samantha and Oscar share the love cup, Warwick Wine Estate, March 2012.

Words of Wisdom, Trish Taylor.

Oscar and Samantha, Johannesburg, 2012.

Samantha, Henry and Kerri-Lee, Somerset West, 2012.

Trish, Samantha and Kerri-Lee, Camps Bay, 2014.

Samantha on the beach, Western Cape, 2012.

Samantha and Kerri-Lee, Samantha’s 18th birthday party, Dainfern Valley, 2011.

Samantha, beach yoga, Somerset West, 2012.

Guns, Fast Cars and Speedboats

When Sammy told me how Oscar had fired his gun out of the sunroof of a moving vehicle, a car in which she was a passenger, I can’t even begin to describe how angry I was with him. It was sometime in October 2012, just after he came back to South Africa from the Olympics. His friend Darren Fresco was in the car with them. They were on their way back from the Vaal River, an out-of-town resort area near Johannesburg, having been out with “the boys”, in high-end luxury cars lent to them by Justin Divaris, the chief executive of the Daytona group. After a day of racing around and testosterone-injected fun in the sun, returning home, the cops had pulled them over for exceeding the speed limit. Speeds in excess of 200 kilometres were recorded on Fresco’s phone. After they drove off, Oscar laughingly fired his 9mm gun up into the air through the open sunroof, the same weapon he allegedly used later to kill Reeva Steenkamp. In court Fresco gave evidence that after Oscar fired the shot he immediately said, “Are you fucking mad?” Perhaps for Oscar, seeing himself over the previous year, plastered
all over billboards, in magazines, on television as Nike’s “I am the Bullet in the Chamber”, had got to him. It may have made him think he was invincible, untouchable.

My mind went into overdrive when I thought of what might have happened as a result of his actions. It’s a myth that “shooting upward” is in any way safe. I became quite obsessed reading about similar incidents around the world. I found out that in almost all the states in the US it is illegal to do this as there is a high possibility that a bullet fired up will maintain its spin and retain enough energy to be lethal on impact coming back down. I found it interesting that between 1985 and 1992, a US study found that 118 people were treated for random “falling-bullet injuries” at one single Los Angeles medical centre, resulting in 38 deaths. And those are statistics from just one place.

On the day Oscar is alleged to have recklessly fired the gun, anything could have happened; a stray bullet, as with a number of gun accidents, could have landed back in the car, injuring or, God forbid, killing any one of them or, for that matter, killing or injuring any other innocent person who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was for this incident, as well as an additional shooting incident, that two new charges were added to the premeditated murder charge sheet for Oscar’s trial that began in early March 2014. The state alleged that Oscar contravened the Firearms Act twice by firing off a gun recklessly in public, once through his car’s sunroof and earlier in January 2013 at Tasha’s, a busy restaurant in the palazzo area of upmarket shopping estate, Melrose Arch, where over 200 people were enjoying lunch at the time.

Apparently, according to boxer Kevin Lerena, a friend of Oscar, the loaded weapon was allegedly passed under the table to Oscar by his friend Darren Fresco, during which time a shot was fired. It missed Lerena’s foot by just centimetres. He was lucky; it could easily have severely injured him, never mind any of the others at the table, let alone the other customers seated nearby. When Oscar’s group was questioned by the manager as to what the huge noise was, the owner of the gun, Darren Fresco, took the fall. The
police were never called. Once again Oscar refrained from taking responsibility just as he had failed to do when he hid behind the counter after driving recklessly in the streets around our home in Dainfern in the Nissan GTR, back in 2011.

Although our whole family had been uncomfortable with guns before Oscar came into our lives in 2011, over time we began to have more conversations at home around his guns, and slowly we became less and less shocked by them, which is strange for a family who was strongly against violence and guns.

It’s strange to think, after Oscar entered our world, how calm I became with all the gun talk and the growing number of incidents in which Sammy was exposed to them.

After all, I had only ever shot a gun once, when my husband convinced me to go to a shooting range. At the range, I hated holding it and I hated shooting it; I vowed never to touch one again. At the time my husband had been trying to convince me that we needed to own two guns. I finally relented but I was very uncomfortable having guns in the home, despite them being locked up in the safe.

So when there was a government announcement that gun owners had five years, from January 2005, to re-license or surrender their guns, I was very happy to be part of the initiative to surrender them. I convinced Henry and we handed our guns in and became enthusiastic supporters of a gun-free South Africa. By the end of 2009, police said, 180 000 guns had been surrendered. I was delighted to know that ours, along with thousands of others, would be destroyed.

From what I gathered, in Oscar’s world, guns were often around – in the car, on his person, under or next to his bed.

One of the things about being in Oscar’s circle is that in some way we all became complicit in his misdemeanours. Because he was so paranoid about getting bad press and having the media find out certain uncomfortable truths about his life, we all ended up keeping secrets for him. Once he asked Sammy to carry his gun in her bag and forgot about it. When they got to the airport she almost walked through airport security with it in her bag. Before boarding he had to run back and put the weapon in the car.

Before we became estranged from Oscar, we couldn’t talk about any of these things for fear of compromising and exposing him. We couldn’t talk about them afterwards either, although this was more due to fear in case one of his friends carried out his threats to harm Sammy or the family. There was also always the possibility that our version of events would get twisted, by the media or his friends, and we could suddenly be implicated in some of his wrongdoings.

Oscar loved guns. There was no doubt about that. He owned at least six licensed firearms and had applied for licences for another six. Why anyone would want 12 guns is a mystery to me. (Although gun lovers apparently see this as quite normal, especially if they belong to gun clubs, as Oscar did – the Lowveld Firearm Collectors Association – a gun collectors’ club which he joined in April 2012.)

His gun collection was clearly his pride and joy. He seemed to love Smith & Wesson – he owned a Smith & Wesson 500, described as “the most powerful production revolver in the world” and on the Smith & Wesson website as “a hunting handgun for any game animal walking”. It fires .500-caliber shells and holds five rounds.

He also owned another revolver, a snub-nosed looking gun, just 4.7cms long – a Smith & Wesson .38-calibre, popular as a self-defence weapon.

Along with those two handguns, he owned three shotguns, a Mossberg, a Maverick and a Winchester, all American makes.

On top of these he owned a Vektor .223-calibre rifle: an incredibly powerful civilian version of the R-series assault rifle used by South Africa’s military. Apparently this is not the kind of gun the average person owns or carries around. The gun is so powerful that its bullet can travel for over 500 metres. It’s not the kind of gun that would usually be used in an urban or suburban setting due to its carrying power, and is most popular with sports shooters, security firms, farmers and collectors. Why Oscar had this gun in his home is anyone’s guess.

Unlike most areas of his life, where he was pretty closed up and private, he spoke to the media openly about his guns.
New
York Times
journalist Michael Sokolove wrote a profile on the Paralympian, and Oscar invited him to shoot a few rounds at a nearby firing range, so the experience of watching Oscar shoot has been well documented.

I also recall reading in a newspaper where he told a journalist how, when speeding through a township, he accidentally ran over a dog. When he saw it injured and dragging its back legs, he got out of his car, walked over to the dog and shot it in the head, leaving the owner horrified.

He regularly referred to his guns and shooting on the social media forum Twitter and when he was training at his private track in Gemona, in north-eastern Italy, he often took breaks by target practising at a shooting range near Tolmezzo. In November 2011, Oscar posted a photo of himself on Twitter, firing a rifle, with the caption: “Had a 96% headshot over 300m from 50 shots! Bam!”

In June 2012 during the time he spent training in Italy, before the Olympics, he posted tweets that he was going back to Tolmezzo to shoot vintage rifles, adding: “Amped to the max! Yeaaah boi!!”

Although I never really followed him on Twitter, when I saw these gun-bragging tweets, they sickened me. I think at the time I just tried to ignore them and prayed that he would never harm anyone and would be responsible with his guns. I suppose what worried me most was the possibility that, in one of his frequent bouts of depression, he would perhaps use a gun against himself. So when the tragic Valentine’s shooting happened, it felt almost
eerily inevitable, but it still came as an enormous shock when we found out he had shot someone else.

When I think about it, his preoccupation with guns was not that unusual in a gun-crazy country like South Africa. According to an article from March 2013, “Two years ago Police Minister Nkosinathi Emmanuel Mthethwa said that among the country’s 49 million people there were 1.7 million registered firearm owners holding 2.9 million guns.” We read about it constantly, how gun ownership is particularly prevalent in high-crime parts of South Africa. Horrifying stats wallpaper our world as we hear how the South African Police registers more than 15 000 murders a year.

After Reeva’s death, the UK-based newspapers,
The Daily Telegraph
and
The Daily Mirror
quoted Oscar’s father, Henke Pistorius, as saying the family owns a number of handguns for self-defence.

South Africa’s
Beeld
newspaper reported that the runner’s father, three uncles and grandfather own 55 firearms between them – ranging from handguns to rifles.

“Some of the guns are for hunting and some are for protection, the handguns,”
The Daily Telegraph
quoted Henke Pistorius as saying. “It speaks to the ANC government, look at white crime levels, why protection is so poor in this country, it’s an aspect of our society… You can’t rely on the police, not because they are inefficient always but because crime is so rife.”

The ANC immediately responded to Henke Pistorius’ off-the-cuff inflammatory remarks. ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu said it “rejects with contempt” the suggestion that the ANC government doesn’t adequately protect white South Africans against crime.

“Not only is this statement devoid of truth, it is also racist,” Mthembu said. “It is sad that he has chosen to politicise a tragic incident that is still fresh in the minds of those affected and the public.”

Although of course it would be naive to say that there are no safety and security problems in our beautiful country, it’s where we have chosen to live, and we remain proudly South African.
Thank God we have never been harmed or threatened, except, of course, by one of Oscar’s friends. I deeply believe in striving for a better, more peaceful country. But obviously security and violence are a much-discussed, highly contentious subject in South Africa.

Embarrassed by Henke Pistorius’ statement, the family distanced themselves from it and responded in the media: “Oscar Pistorius’s family is deeply concerned about the comments made by Oscar’s father, Henke Pistorius, to the UK newspaper, the
Telegraph
, about the family using its weapons to defend themselves against crime in South Africa, and especially about his comments that the ANC government is not willing to protect white South Africans.”

Trying to do some damage control, Arnold Pistorius, Oscar’s uncle, released a statement saying that, “the Pistorius family own weapons purely for sport and hunting purposes”.

That, however, contradicted Oscar’s own testimony, based on a self-defence angle, to the magistrate who freed him on bail. In an affidavit, Oscar said he slept with his 9mm handgun under his bed because, “I have also been a victim of violence and of burglaries before.”

But if truth be told, Oscar couldn’t have chosen a more protected place to live than in Silver Woods Country Estate, an expansive, high-security, gated property, probably one of the safest residential areas in all of South Africa.

Situated just outside the country’s capital, Pretoria, the lavish estate is idyllic in every way. Described as a “prestigious security estate” with “class, style and distinction”, it’s built on the border of a private game sanctuary, the Farm Inn, where “the sounds of lions and other wildlife can often be heard”, with 23 species of wild animals kept at the private game sanctuary. At the time Oscar bought his property at Silver Woods, the Farm Inn had a cheetah-breeding programme. Early on in their relationship, Oscar took Sam and a journalist from a UK-based publication along with him to spend the day there, during which time stunning pictures of Oscar and the cheetahs were taken and published all over the world.

Silver Woods boasts top-notch security which, along with guns, is one of many South Africans’ top preoccupations. It has electrified
fences, armed 24-hour security guards and controlled access. As a result it’s one of the most sought-after choices of residence in the area because of its high levels of safety.

According to Sammy, she always felt totally safe when she stayed there, apart from the few times Oscar himself frightened her.

It was there, in September 2009, at Oscar’s house on the Silver Woods Estate, where Cassidy Taylor-Memmory, a guest and friend of his former girlfriend Melissa Rom, claims to have been not only frightened, but injured by Oscar. Apparently the two friends came across Oscar kissing another girl and an argument broke out. According to Memmory he told Melissa and all her friends to leave. Carrying Oscar’s version of events, the media reported that Oscar accused Cassidy of getting rowdy, using too much alcohol, and tried to evict her from his house. According to Oscar she resisted and kicked a door and hurt her foot. In a totally different version of events Cassidy laid a charge of assault against him at the Boschkop police station, accusing him of slamming a door on her so hard that a piece of wood shattered and injured her foot. She denied that she was in any way drunk. The matter was finally confidentially settled out of court in February 2014, with Oscar paying Memmory’s costs.