Oscar Pistorius sentenced to five years in prison for manslaughter of girlfriend

Oscar Pistorius sentenced to five years in prison for manslaughter of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp .22Oscar Pistorius has been sentenced to five years in prison for the manslaughter of Reeva Steenkamp – but he could serve just 10 months in jail before being held under house arrest.

Pistorius killed his girlfriend in the early hours of Valentine’s Day in 2013 when he shot Miss Steenkamp, who was 29, through the bathroom door at his home in Pretoria.

Even if the 27-year-old is released from prison early, the International Paralympic Committee has confirmed he will not be permitted to compete at any of their events for five years. This rules Pistorius out of running at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympics but he could return for Tokyo 2020.55This would change if Pistorius appealed against Judge Thokozile Masipa’s punishment and was handed a shorter sentence, but the IPC confirmed it is currently impossible for the athlete to compete in Rio.

Craig Spence, spokesman for the IPC, said: ‘It’s five years, 2019 is where we stand on it.
‘The only way he could compete earlier is if he or his team appealed and got a lesser sentence.’

The International Olympic Committee were more equivocal about Pistorius being allowed to compete against able-bodied athletes in Rio in 2016 or Tokyo four years later.

‘We take note of the court’s decision,’ said IOC spokesman Mark Adams. ‘This is a human tragedy for the family of Reeva Steenkamp and also for Oscar Pistorius. We hope very much that time will bring comfort to all those concerned but at this stage we have no further comment to make.’

Pistorius’ selection would first need to be ratified by the IAAF – athletics’ world governing body – before reaching the IOC.

The amputee athlete, known as the Blade Runner, stood staring straight ahead as Judge Masipa announced his sentence for killing the model. Pistorius always argued that he thought he was firing at intruders into his home.33The judge handed down an immediate prison term for the charge of culpable homicide – equivalent to manslaughter in the UK – saying she believed a non-custodial sentence would ‘send the wrong message to the community’.Pistorius was driven to jail in an armoured police van, with tactical response guards hanging on.

He arrived at Pretoria Central prison, a little over a mile from the court, within minutes, driven in through a side entrance.Last year, the notorious prison was re-named the Kgosi Mampuru II after a chief who was hanged at the prison in 1883 after being wrongly accused of murder.

Judge Masipa also sentenced Pistorius to three years in prison for unlawfully firing a gun in a restaurant in a separate incident weeks before Miss Steenkamp’s death. She ordered that sentence to be wholly suspended.

After Pistorius was asked to stand by Judge Masipa, he quickly removed his designer watch from his wrist and held it behind his back as she told him he was going to jail. He passed the watch to his uncle as he descended into the bowels of the court to the holding cells.

Pistorius had every reason to not want to take the timepiece into the notorious prison.During his murder trial the court had heard how a watch worth £6,000 had been stolen from a display case holding eight designer watches in the athlete’s bedroom, even as crime scene officers were gathering blood spatter and other forensic evidence nearby.

The theft prompted every officer at the scene to be frisked and have their bags and vehicles to be searched when they left Pistorius’ property. The watch was never recovered.

A member of the athlete’s legal team claimed after the hearing that he is expected to serve a sixth of the sentence – around 10 months – in jail before being held under house arrest.

According to the legal Act under which Pistorius was sentenced, he must spend at least one-sixth of his sentence before he can apply for leave to serve the rest under ‘correctional supervision’.44The athlete appeared to have prepared himself to spend some time behind bars, while his uncle Arnold Pistorius, the head of the large family, said there would be no appeal against the sentence.

Pistorius’s brother, Carl, posted an emotional tweet along with a picture of him and Oscar as children. He said: ‘Together in Christ we are STRONG, in Christ there can never be defeat.’In another tweet, he said: ‘May God gives (sic) you grace so that your salvation might be built up and not broken – regardless of the circumstance. #Hiswordwillnotreturnvoid’.

The Paralympian could have been sentenced to up to 15 years in prison, handed a community-based punishment and a fine or house arrest for shooting the model through a toilet cubicle door in his home.

More than seven months after Pistorius’s trial started, Judge Masipa announced the punishment she had decided on after finding him guilty of manslaughter but acquitting him of murder.66Pistorius was asked by the judge to remain seated on a wooden bench in the Pretoria courtroom until she formally announced his sentence. He sat and looked straight ahead at Masipa as she read from her judgment.-Africametro

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