Pretoria - “I don’t want to go back to jail. I don’t want to have to waste my life sitting there.”
This is part of the emotional interview with Oscar Pistorius, due to be aired on Friday at 9pm on the UK based ITV channel.
Three short snippets of the interview was released by ITV on Thursday, on the eve of the world seeing the Paralympics’ first television interview since the killing of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day, 2013.
Read: ‘Reeva would not want me in prison’
An emotional, but dry-eyed Oscar can be seen on these clips, saying that he believed Reeva would not want him to return to jail. He vowed that, if spared jail, he would devote his life to the underprivileged. “I would like to believe that if Reeva could look down upon me, she would want me to live that life.”
The interview promised to give Oscar’s account of what happened in the early hours of that fateful morning when he fired four shots into the toilet door behind which Reeva Steenkamp was.
He said that many people believed that he intentionally killed her and that he could not argue with those who believe “they should lock me up and throw the key away.”
“I understand the pain people feel, that loved her and miss her. I feel the same pain. I look back and I think, I always think, how did this possibly happen…”
One of the clips released show Oscar on his stumps, talking to investigative journalist Mark Williams-Thomas at his uncle Arnold Pistorius’ Waterkloof mansion, where he tried to explain that it was impossible for him to hit down the toilet door with a cricket bat, as first claimed by the prosecution.
There are also images of the bloody toilet on which Reeva was slumped after she was shot.
The interview is released less than two weeks before Oscar is due to be sentenced on July 6 on a charge of murder. He opted not to testify in mitigation of sentence – a move which was criticised by the State, which questioned why he would rather tell his story to the world than to the court.
* The interview will be aired on M-Net City (channel 115 on DStv) at 10.55pm on Friday.
Pretoria News