Pretoria – The High Court in Pretoria should not give too much weight to Oscar Pistorius’s personal circumstances when sentencing him for murder, prosecutor Gerrie Nel said on Wednesday.
“In the case of a serious crime, the personal circumstances of the accused will recede into the background. This is a very, very serious offence,” he said during his closing arguments ahead of Pistorius’s sentencing for the murder of Reeva Steenkamp in 2013.
Nel called on the court to consider Steenkamp’s personal circumstances in sentencing Pistorius.
“The court should take into account who she was, what she was, what dreams she had. She had no contributory factor in this crime. It was all the deceased. She wanted to look after her father and mother,” he said.
Nel said Pistorius’s action of arming himself in his bedroom, making his way to the bathroom, gun at the ready, and firing four shots into the toilet door, which “tore up” Steenkamp’s body, was “gratuitious”.