Almost 11 years after killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, former Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius is set to be released from prison on parole.
On Valentine’s Day of 2013, he repeatedly shot Steenkamp through a bathroom door. He later claimed he thought Steenkamp was a burglar.
In 2016, a South African court sentenced Pistorius, who is currently 37, to 13 years in prison.
January 5, 2024 is when the parole board has scheduled his release.
While Steenkamp’s mother did not object to bail, she expressed doubts in a letter to the parole board about whether Pistorius’s “huge anger issues” were adequately addressed in jail. She also stated that she might be “concerned for the safety of any woman” who now interacts with him.
At the Friday parole hearing at the Atteridgeville prison, which is close to Pretoria, June Steenkamp declined to attend, stating that she “simply cannot muster the energy to face him again at this stage.”
Following the death of Barry, Reeva’s father, and her husband earlier this year, she remarked that the burden on them both had been tremendous.
“My dear Barry left this world utterly devastated by the thought that he had failed to protect his daughter… The only hope he had left, was that Oscar would find it in himself to eventually tell the full truth,” Mrs Steenkamp’s statement read.
In less than a year, Pistorius had already had two parole hearings.
Because he had not served out the required minimum amount of time in jail, his initial request for parole was denied in March. The South African Constitutional Court subsequently declared that to be an error, which prompted Friday’s parole hearing.
