Pistorius jailed for five years for killing girlfriend

Oscar Pistorius

Oscar Pistorius has been sentenced to five years imprisonment for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day of last year Eurosport reports.

The Olympic and Paralympic runner was convicted of culpable homicide last month for shooting dead 29-year-old law graduate and model Reeva Steenkamp at his home in Pretoria.

Judge Thokozile Masipa – only the second black woman to rise to the bench – stressed the difficulty of arriving at a decision that was “fair and just to society and to the accused”, but ordered that Pistorius serve a maximum of five years for the crime.

His only reaction was to wipe his eyes before two police officers led him down to the holding cells beneath the High Court in the heart of the South African capital.

Ninety minutes later, an armoured police vehicle carrying Pistorius – still dressed in dark suit, white shirt and black tie – left the building through a throng of reporters towards Pretoria Central Prison, where he is expected to serve his time.

Once the execution site for opponents of South Africa’s former white-minority government, the jail is now home to the country’s most hardened criminals, including the man known as “Prime Evil”, apartheid death squad leader Eugene de Kock. Prisons officials said Pistorius, whose lower legs were amputated when he was a baby, would be housed in a separate and secure hospital wing of the massive complex.

His family remained calm throughout the sentencing.

Pistorius was also sentenced to three years for unlawful discharge of a firearm in a restaurant, with that portion of the sentence suspended for five years.

After the proceedings, one of Pistorius’s legal team, Roxanne Adams, told Sky News that Pistorius will serve just a sixth of his sentence in prison – a mere 10 months –before serving the rest of his sentence under house arrest.

“Justice was served,” said the Steenkamp family lawyer, Dup de Bruyn, adding that it was “the right sentence” – but the victim’s mother put things in a different light.

“There is no closure without Reeva, unless you can magic her back,” said June Steenkanp.