Pretoria – Oscar Pistorius does not scream like a woman, his ex-girlfriend told the North Gauteng High Court on Friday.

“It is the accused’s case that if he screams, and if he’s really anxious, he screams like a woman,” prosecutor Gerrie Nel said to witness Samantha Taylor.

“That is not true,” the willowy blonde replied, later adding: “It sounded like a man, My Lady.”

When asked by Nel when she had heard Pistorius scream before, she said she had previously heard him scream “at myself”.

Pistorius’s lawyer has previously argued that on the night he shot dead Reeva Steenkamp, the woman whom witnesses say they heard screaming was in fact Pistorius screaming like a woman.

Defence

The question relates to one of the pillars of Pistorius’s defence – that he screams in a high-pitched voice like a woman’s.

His lawyer Barry Roux, SC, has told witnesses who claim they heard a woman’s terrified cries coming from his house before Steenkamp died, that in fact it was his client who had cried out.

Roux said the defence had recreated screams and shouts in tests at Pistorius’s home and would submit the results to the court to challenge the testimony the court has heard.

“On the 21st of February there were indeed tests done and part of the tests was a woman screaming, loud, as loud as she could,” Roux said.

Earlier, Taylor told the court she met Pistorius at a rugby game in 2010 and started dating him the next year, when she was 17.

Asked by Nel why the relationship ended, she replied: “He cheated on me with Reeva Steenkamp.”

Pistorius is accused of the murder of model and law graduate Steenkamp. He is also charged with illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition, and two counts of discharging a firearm in public.

SAPA