Testimony: Pistorius asked friend to take blame for stray gunshot

The Associated Press

PRETORIA, South Africa -- A month before he fatally shot his girlfriend, Oscar Pistorius cajoled a friend into taking the blame when a gun was accidentally fired inside a Johannesburg restaurant where they were dining with other friends, according to murder-trial testimony yesterday.

"Just say it was you. I don't want any tension around me," witness Kevin Lerena remembered Pistorius telling a friend. "There's too much media hype around me."

The testimony by Lerena, a boxer, raises questions about the character of a man who insists he accidentally killed Reeva Steenkamp in his home on Feb. 14, 2013. Prosecutors allege the double-amputee Olympic runner intentionally shot 29-year-old Steenkamp, a model and television personality, after a loud argument.

The restaurant episode occurred in January 2013, and relates to three firearms-related charges against Pistorius, apart from the murder charge. Pistorius, 27, pleaded not guilty to all four charges.

One friend, Darren Fresco, passed his gun to Pistorius under the table and told him that there was a bullet in the chamber, Lerena said. Then a shot went off, puncturing the floor, he said.

Before the restaurant management approached the table, Lerena said, Pistorius asked Fresco to say he was responsible for the gunshot.

Earlier, defense lawyer Barry Roux sought to undermine the prosecution testimony of a couple who say they heard a woman's screams and gunfire the night of the killing. Roux asserted that telephone records show that the banging sounds the neighbors heard were not gunshots but a distressed Pistorius breaking down the toilet door with a cricket bat after realizing he had shot Steenkamp when she was in the toilet, thinking she was an intruder.