The premature parole of Oscar Pistorius has been overturned by South Africa’s ministry of justice on the grounds that the convicted killer’s early release has “no legal basis.”
The paraplegic Olympian known as Blade Runner was set to slink out of prison on Friday after serving only 10 months for gunning down his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in 2013 on Valentine’s Day.
Even before committing homicide that year, Pistorius was notorious for his lethal temper and reckless handling of firearms, and yet he only received a 5-year sentence for a crime of passion that many also believe was premeditated.
At trial for murdering the defenseless woman who had locked herself in his bathroom during a domestic dispute, Pistorius frivolously claimed he shot Steenkamp to death because he “feared” she was an “armed intruder.”
The celebrity athlete fired at her multiple times through the bathroom door, pausing in between rounds, according to ballistic and forensic experts.
Witnesses further testified to overhearing a woman’s screams just before a staggered volley of gunshots pierced the air and silenced Reeva Steenkamp forever.
The brutally slain actress-model was an outspoken critic of South Africa’s runaway violence against women and girls -- something which may be factoring into today’s last-minute decision to suspend her murderer’s parole as “premature.”
In addition, prosecutors this week filed an appeal of the original decision declaring Steenkamp’s gruesome death at the hands of Oscar Pistorius as accidental, citing a lack of evidence to support such an unjust conclusion.
They’re lauded in that effort by the Progressive Women’s Movement of South Africa, a group that’s condemned Pistorius’s early release as an “outrageous insult” to victims of domestic abuse.
If his probation is in fact reinstated by the parole board that originally granted it, then Pistorius would serve out the rest of an already lenient murder sentence under mansion arrest.
