Oscar Pistorius released on parole from jail for his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp’s murder

Olympic and Paralympic runner Oscar Pistorius, who has been in jail since 2014 for killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp has been released on Parole on Friday said the South Africa’s Department of Corrections.

The announcement came in the morning around 8:30 AM (South African time), indicating corrections officials had released the Olympic runner from the Atteridgeville Correctional Center in the South African capital, Pretoria, in the early hours.

The South African sprinter fatally shot Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day in 2013. Reeva, who was 29 when she was murdered, was a law graduate and successful model.

Pistorius, meanwhile, was one of the most famous athletes from South Africa, as he competed using carbon-fiber prosthetic legs. Using those prosthetic legs, he won multiple gold medals at the Paralympics and then went on to compete at the London 2012 Olympics.

Pistorius had fired four shots with his pistol through the door of a toilet cubicle at his Pretoria home in the early hours of Valentine’s Day in February 2013.

At his hearings, Pistorius had argued that he had mistaken his girlfriend for an intruder and that he thought Steenkamp was sleeping in bed.

The BBC reported that Reeva’s mother, June, had decided to not oppose the athlete’s appeal for parole. Reeva’s father Barry passed away in September last year.

The athlete nicknamed as “Blade Runner” was initially sentenced to imprisonment for five years in 2014 for culpable homicide. But that decision from the high court was changed by the Supreme Court of appeal a year later as it found him guilty of murder.

He was sent to jail for six years in 2016 after a high court sentence. In 2017, the supreme court doubled his murder sentence to 13 years and five months.

A report in The Guardian noted that Pistorius was denied parole in March 2023 because he had not completed the minimum detention period required to be eligible for parole.

However, a constitutional court ruled in October that Pistorius had served half of his sentence by March 21 this year, which meant he was eligible for parole, after his sentence was backdated to July 2016 instead of November 2017.

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