Reeva Steenkamp’s mother, June, is set to publish a book about the trial in which athlete Oscar Pistorius was found guilty of culpable homicide for the Valentine’s Day killing of the model. She is also speaking out about her feelings on the charges, for which he will be sentenced in October.
June Steenkamp says she doesn’t feel the charge of culpable homicide–rather than first degree, which couldn’t be proven due to conflicting witness accounts–is the right one for the man who killed her daughter.
“In my opinion it means that Oscar’s not going to pay properly for killing our lovely daughter. At the end of it all, I don’t feel that justice has been done. I understand that the judge could only deal with the facts that were placed before her, but my view is that the verdict is not the right one, it doesn’t sit well with me at all,” Steenkamp told Hello! Magazine.
The book–Reeva: A Mother’s Story–will be released in Britain in November.
“In this painfully honest and unflinching account of Reeva’s life, she will talk about what really went on in her mind as she sat in the packed Pretoria court room day after day and how she is coping in the aftermath of the verdict,” said Sphere, the publisher of the book, in a statement.
Pistorius admitted to shooting his girlfriend in the early hours of Valentine’s Day last year, but claimed he was awoken in the middle of the night by a noise in the bathroom. Thinking it was an intruder–and not noticing in the darkened room that Steenkamp wasn’t in bed–he retrieved his weapon and shot through the closed door. Steenkamp was hit four times.
Pistorius–a double amputee who has competed in the Olympic and the Paralympic Games–was reportedly fearful for his safety and the safety of his home in South Africa, which was the reason he kept weapons in his home.
“I spoke to him at his house and when we went upstairs to his bedroom so that our photographer could take photos of his running blades, that was when I saw the weapons,” said writer Jonathan McEvoy, who once interviewed Pistorius. “There was the pistol by the bed, the machine gun up against the wall, the baseball bat under the window, a cricket bat too. He was concerned by safety and security to a high level, there was no doubt about that.”