Family of Blade Runner Pistorius’s girlfriend fight his parole bid

THE family of Reeva Steenkamp were today set to oppose Oscar Pistorius’s bid to be freed from prison.

The former Paralympics star has served half of his 13-year sentence for murdering his girlfriend Ms Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day 2013.

The 36-year-old double amputee, pictured right with her, is currently in a low-security prison outside the South African city of Pretoria and is hoping to be granted parole.

He recently met

Barry Steenkamp, Ms Steenkamp’s father, as part of a mandatory process known as “victim-offender dialogue”.

Mr Steenkamp was too ill to travel to today’s parole hearing but Reeva’s mother June was expected to be there to oppose the release of her daughter’s killer. She has made public her frustration that the sixtime Paralympic gold medallist continues to maintain he shot her by mistake, believing she was a robber.

Pistorius, once known as “the Blade Runner”, was initially found guilty of culpable homicide.

But on appeal he was convicted of her murder on the grounds that he must have known that his actions — shooting three times through a locked bathroom door in his Pretoria home — would lead to the death of whoever was on the other side.

South African prosecutors sought to prove Pistorius was an angry, violent man, with an unhealthy obsession with guns, who killed his 30-year-old girlfriend in a late-night rage.