Former Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius will be freed from jail in South Africa on parole, 10 years after murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. The parole board has set his release for 5 January 2024.
Serious offenders in South Africa must serve at least half their sentence to be eligible for parole, which Pistorius has done.
The double-amputee Olympic runner was one of the world’s most admired athletes before he killed his girlfriend by shooting her multiple times through a toilet door at his home on Valentine’s Day 2013, claiming he mistook her for a burglar.
Pistorius, now 37, was sentenced in 2016 to serve 13 years in prison. Pistorius was initially sent to Pretoria’s central prison, a notorious apartheid-era jail. He was moved to the city’s Atteridgeville Correctional Centre in 2016.
Pistorius was initially convicted of culpable homicide — a charge comparable to manslaughter — for killing Reeva Steenkamp. That conviction was overturned and he was convicted of murder after an appeal by prosecutors. They also appealed against an initial sentence of six years for murder, and Pistorius was ultimately sentenced to 13 years and five months in prison, reports APNews.
Pistorius testified at his murder trial that he killed Steenkamp by mistake, thinking she was a dangerous intruder hiding in his bathroom in the middle of the night when he fired four times through the door with his licensed 9mm pistol. Prosecutors argued that Steenkamp, aged 29, had run to the toilet during a late-night argument and Pistorius killed her in a rage.
Steenkamp’s mother did not oppose bail but – in a letter sent to the parole board – said she wondered whether Pistorius’s „huge anger issues” were truly dealt with in prison, adding she would potentially be „concerned for the safety of any woman” who now comes into contact with him.
June Steenkamp chose not to attend the parole hearing on Friday at Atteridgeville prison, near Pretoria. Her husband and Reeva’s father, Barry, died earlier this year and she said the strain on them both had been immense.
