The prosecution in the Oscar Pistorius murder trial seems intent on proving that the six-time Paralympic gold medal winner has a thing for guns. On Tuesday, Pistorius’ friend Darren Fresco took the stand and spoke about an incident where an allegedly angry Pistorius fired a gun through the sunroof of a car.
Fresco said that he was the driver of a car that was stopped by police in 2012 for a routine traffic violation. During the stop, Fresco said an officer handled Pistorius’ weapon. This allegedly infuriated Pistorius.
“(The) officer had picked up the accused’s weapon, to which the accused said ‘You can’t just touch another man’s gun,'” Fresco recalled. “He was furious about it, that someone else had touched his gun.”
To express his displeasure, Fresco claims Pistorius later fired the weapon through the sunroof of the car.
Pistorius’ ex-girlfriend Samantha Taylor also testified about the sunroof shooting incident, claiming Oscar and Fresco joked about shooting a “robot,” or traffic light, before Pistorius fired the gun. Taylor also said that Pistorius used to sleep with a gun at his bedside and woke up several times during the night to investigate noises he heard while they were dating.
Last week, another friend of Pistorius testified that Oscar accidentally fired a weapon in a restaurant once and begged Fresco to take the blame.
We all know I’m hardly a legal expert, but I could see the “trigger-happy” angle working for either the prosecution or the defense in this case. Pistorius’ alleged quick finger could explain why he was so quick to shoot at what he thought was an intruder, or it could explain why he was so quick to shoot Reeva Steenkamp if they got into an argument. That will be for the judge to decide.
