Oscar Pistorius, the “Blade Runner”, was let out on bail yesterday despite having a quite unrealistic and unreasonable version of events in the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Yes, he shot her, but she was supposed to be a burglar, or something. You see, he meant to kill someone else he had trapped in the bathroom.
Well, there are a lot of questions and problems and inconsistencies with Mr. Pastorius’s version of his shooting and killing her, and many people are beginning to poke holes in the story. But it looks like the “justice” system over there is doing its best to be flexible for their national hero, so perhaps they’ll let him wriggle out of his initial statement. After all, it all happened so fast, it hardly gave him any time to come up with an excuse. I mean, he was confused, and maybe he didn’t remember everything that way it really happened. So maybe he’ll get another shot at this defense strategy.
Well, if he gets another shot at concocting a story, I think I have just the thing! It seems the court is happy to give him a lot of leeway, so why not go off in another direction entirely to explain why he shot Ms. Steenkamp to death last week? And I’d say the more off-the-wall the better, just in case it looks like he might have to do jail time, so maybe he can claim insanity! Here’s how this might work:
His lawyers must tell the court that the initial version of events was inaccurate, and it was inaccurate because he couldn’t tell them the truth, because it’s classified (!). But he has to tell them now, since it’s imperative he stay out of jail and retain the use of his firearms. You see, he isn’t actually called the “Blade Runner” because of his race running career and his use of prosthetic carbon-fiber legs (nicknamed “blades”): he only started doing all of that for cover to distract everyone from the truth, which is that he’s actually a real Blade Runner like from the movie Blade Runner, and it’s his sworn duty to hunt down and kill replicants. And the most effective way for him to do this is to get involved in a romantic relationship with them, and then shoot them down at his home so they can’t escape, and then fabricate a story about being afraid of burglars breaking in. In fact, the whole thing about his being a victim of break-ins and such and being paranoid about crime and having guns for self-protection is just a cover story concocted by the United Nations’s Bureau of Replicant Annihilation (or BRA) to lay the foundation for this defense so that he can get away with the killing and seduce and kill the next replicant. And that’s why they’ve got to exonerate him and let him go, because there are more dangerous replicants out there threatening humanity! (You can always tell a replicant because they’re way more attractive and accomplished than most everyone else, and also because they end up dead in his house, because he’s a Blade Runner.)
And if he uses this story as his criminal defense, I believe that he will either be released, or at the very least, declared insane, in which case he’ll be put under house arrest, and suspected replicants will be delivered to his house so he can continue his critical mission unabated.
BTW: I apologize if this comes across as too flip for some readers, but this reflects how ridiculous his version of events seems to me to be. I’m mocking that, and not Ms. Steenkamp, for whom I hope there will be some justice, although it’s not looking very promising at the moment. Whether he killed her in a cold-blooded premeditated manner, or he killed her intending to kill someone else, he still killed her, and that’s still a serious crime. But I am lampooning his story, because frankly I find it risible, as well as the story put forth by the police. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what happened, but I believe I have a fairly good, well-reasoned theory of what I think likely happened, and it goes something like this:
Pistorius and Steenkamp got into a heated argument in the early hours of Feb. 14th (Valentine’s Day), and based upon his quick and extreme temper, Pistorius hit or slapped her. (He has threatened a man with breaking his legs over a woman before, according to the news, and according to police and Wikipedia, he slammed a door into a woman at his house before, bringing the police and a charge of assault, which was later dropped, my guess at the arm-twisting of someone representing Pistorius or the South African athletic interests.) And seeing as how Reeva Steenkamp was an activist for women’s rights and against domestic violence, she likely said that he can’t do that to her, and just wait until she tells everyone about this, whereupon she ran into the bathroom with her cell phone and locked herself in. His prosthetic legs weren’t on yet, so he had to put them on, and he grabbed his gun and followed her into the bathroom. Well, seeing as how his image was possibly about to be shattered and his sponsorship deals lost, etc., in the heat of the moment Pistorius thought quickly: “Just Do It”, and that his best course of action would be to shoot her and to use the excuse that he thought it was a burglar, based upon his well-known crime victim status and his well-publicized fear of break-ins and his home arsenal for such a purpose. So he shot through the door, and being unable to be sure he had killed her, he broke through the door and shot her through a broken-in panel (hence the shell casing in the toilet: the shell casing could not very well have rolled underneath the crack in the door and then leapt up and into the toilet on its own, so it must have been fired through an open section of the door; it doesn’t make sense any other way). Then, after being sure she was shot in the head enough to kill her, he went through the motions of trying to save her, etc.
This is not an accusation, but rather, this is the version of events that makes sense to me based upon the circumstances and the evidence we’ve been presented with so far. And this would be second-degree murder, not first-degree murder; the police screwed the pooch on this case by over-charging Pistorius, and as such, their story lacked credibility also, and so bail was granted, and Pistorius may end up beating the rap and walking. And if that happens, there is no justice for Reeva, and no closure for her family. And that would be ridiculously unjust, because he’s guilty of killing her no matter what the particulars are of how it happened (which is odd, because our news people keep saying he is accused of killing her, when he is actually accused of murder: he already admitted to killing her). But because he’s such a national hero, he might just get special treatment.
Of course, it is absolutely possible that things happened exactly like he said. Between his paranoia of home invasion, the noise of bringing the fan inside, him being half awake and possibly under the influence of alcohol from earlier, it could have been a tragic accident, as unlikely as it seems. Stranger things have definitely happened. And supposedly this is a sad fact of homes with guns in America: residents of the house are supposedly statistically far more likely to become victims of the guns in their own homes than to be protected by them. And while I support gun rights, their potential for tragedy weighs heavily upon society, and never more heavily than upon the shoulders of those whose own firearms, bought for protection, have killed the ones they love most.
Of course, it is absolutely possible that things happened exactly like he said. Between his paranoia of home invasion, the noise of bringing the fan inside, him being half awake and possibly under the influence of alcohol from earlier, it could have been a tragic accident, as unlikely as it seems. Stranger things have definitely happened. And supposedly this is a sad fact of homes with guns in America: residents of the house are supposedly statistically far more likely to become victims of the guns in their own homes than to be protected by them. And while I support gun rights, their potential for tragedy weighs heavily upon society, and never more heavily than upon the shoulders of those whose own firearms, bought for protection, have killed the ones they love most.
