Free Oscar: An Accident Waiting to Happen by Melinda Ferguson, Patricia Taylor Page A

control.
    Looking back I am always amazed with what ease he could look us all in the eye and claim undying love for Sammy, while doing the same with at least one other woman at the same time. This, of course, made me wonder whether many of the things he had told us were true.

Samantha Taylor and Oscar Pistorius, Seychelles, September 2012.

Samantha Taylor Seychelles, September 2012.

Somerset West, sunset.

Samantha and Oscar, Seychelles, September 2012.

Oscar on cheetah shoot with Daily Mail, Pretoria, 2012.

Samantha with cheetah, Farm Inn Wildlife Sanctuary, Pretoria, 2012.

Henry Taylor and Oscar, Dainfern Valley, November 2011.

Samantha, Oscar and Greg, beach in Strand, 2012.

Samantha and Oscar, Samantha’s 18th birthday, Dainfern Valley, November 2011.

Samantha and Oscar share the love cup, Warwick Wine Estate, March 2012.

Words of Wisdom, Trish Taylor.

Oscar and Samantha, Johannesburg, 2012.

Samantha, Henry and Kerri-Lee, Somerset West, 2012.

Trish, Samantha and Kerri-Lee, Camps Bay, 2014.

Samantha on the beach, Western Cape, 2012.

Samantha and Kerri-Lee, Samantha’s 18th birthday party, Dainfern Valley, 2011.

Samantha, beach yoga, Somerset West, 2012.

CHAPTER 8
Trigger Happy
    Guns, Fast Cars and Speedboats
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    When Sammy told me how Oscar had fired his gun out of the sunroof of a moving vehicle, a car in which she was a passenger, I can’t even begin to describe how angry I was with him. It was sometime in October 2012, just after he came back to South Africa from the Olympics. His friend Darren Fresco was in the car with them. They were on their way back from the Vaal River, an out-of-town resort area near Johannesburg, having been out with “the boys”, in high-end luxury cars lent to them by Justin Divaris, the chief executive of the Daytona group. After a day of racing around and testosterone-injected fun in the sun, returning home, the cops had pulled them over for exceeding the speed limit. Speeds in excess of 200 kilometres were recorded on Fresco’s phone. After they drove off, Oscar laughingly fired his 9mm gun up into the air through the open sunroof, the same weapon he allegedly used later to kill Reeva Steenkamp. In court Fresco gave evidence that after Oscar fired the shot he immediately said, “Are you fucking mad?” Perhaps for Oscar, seeing himself over the previous year, plasteredall over billboards, in magazines, on television as Nike’s “I am the Bullet in the Chamber”, had got to him. It may have made him think he was invincible, untouchable.
    My mind went into overdrive when I thought of what might have happened as a result of his actions. It’s a myth that “shooting upward” is in any way safe. I became quite obsessed reading about similar incidents around the world. I found out that in almost all the states in the US it is illegal to do this as there is a high possibility that a bullet fired up will maintain its spin and retain enough energy to be lethal on impact coming back down. I found it interesting that between 1985 and 1992, a US study found that 118 people were treated for random “falling-bullet injuries” at one single Los Angeles medical centre, resulting in 38 deaths. And those are statistics from just one place.
    On the day Oscar is alleged to have recklessly fired the gun, anything could have happened; a stray bullet, as with a number of gun accidents, could have landed back in the car, injuring or, God forbid, killing any one of them or, for that matter, killing or injuring any other innocent person who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
    It was for this incident, as well as an additional shooting incident, that two new charges were added to the premeditated murder charge sheet for Oscar’s trial that began in early March 2014. The state alleged that Oscar contravened the Firearms Act twice by firing off a gun recklessly in public, once through his car’s sunroof and earlier in January 2013 at Tasha’s, a busy restaurant in