Pretoria – Oscar Pistorius met his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp through a mutual friend on 4 November 2012, he told the North Gauteng High Court on Tuesday.
They met through a mutual friend, Justin Devaris, and “hit it off” over lunch.
Afterward she told Devaris that he had forgotten that he had RSVPd with a partner for the SA Sports Awards and Divaris suggested Steenkamp.
Pistorius said he did not think Steenkamp would be that “carefree” but he took Divaris’s advice and she said yes and she would be ready in an hour and a half.
‘Fantastic date’
They went to the SA Sports Awards and later spoke until late. They were famously photographed at that event. He told Divaris that “Reeva was a fantastic date”.
The following day he asked her if she wanted to go for coffee and they saw each other every day for the next six days.
She went overseas after that and when she came back they took November and December getting to know each other.
“I asked her to come with me and she said she needed some time alone,” he said of holiday plans he was making.
She wanted to spend time with a friend at Christmas but the friend cancelled plans and they spent Christmas together with his friends Darren Fresco and his girlfriend.
When he later went to Cape Town she asked if she could stay in his house in Pretoria.
At the end of January it was starting to “pick up”.
The SA Sports Awards is when he “cheated” on his former girlfriend Samantha Taylor, according to Taylor’s testimony earlier.
‘Difficult relationships’
Pistorius said he and Steenkamp had both been in “difficult relationships” before they started dating.
“We both had things that kept us back in our relationship. We had both come out of difficult relationships.”
He said that initially “I was more into her than she was”.
As they got to know each other better, they started caring about each other, he said.
“We started seeing a future with each other.”
On the subject of cars, Pistorius said they both shared an interest in them.
“She was a car enthusiast. It was a common interest of ours.”
Pistorius is accused of the murder of Steenkamp in his Pretoria townhouse on 14 February last year. He shot her through the locked door of his toilet, apparently thinking she was an intruder.
Pistorius is also charged with contraventions of the Firearms Control Act. He allegedly fired a shot from a Glock pistol under a table at a Johannesburg restaurant in January 2013.
On September 30, 2012 he allegedly shot through the open sunroof of a car with his 9mm pistol while driving with friends in Modderfontein.
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