Daijiworld Media Network 

Pretoria, Sep 11: Olympic champion, Oscar Pistorius was today acquitted of killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in a manner of sorts as Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa, said that the prosecution has been unable to present sufficient proof. She did however point out that Mr. Pistorius's behaviour had been negligent.

She expressed that she would have expected him to have rung the police for help, or call out the neighbours, rather than shoot out at the suspected intruder by himself. Mr. Pistorius had told the court that he had called out for help, but one his neighbours who testified in court said that she had only heard a woman scream. The judge cleared Pistorius of murder charges but it is believed that she would charge him with a slightly lesser offence of culpable homicide.

The 27 year old athlete was on trial for shooting and killing his girlfriend through a bathroom door at his home in Silver Woods Country Estate in Pretoria on Valentines Day last year. He said he thought it was an intruder and shot in his desperate self defence. Oscar told the court that he had heard noises in the night coming from the bathroom as Steenkamp lay in the bed or so he believed. Feeling helpless without his prosthetics, he had reached for his 9mm pistol and fired four shots through the bathroom door. It was only after he had put on his prosthetics and gone and opened the door, did he realise the full extent of his act - when he saw his girlfriend lying in a pool of her own blood.

In a trial that has gone on for the past 41 days, Oscar was seen to be in various moods. Sometimes quiet and taking notes, sometimes lashing out and for the most part, in the judge's own words a 'poor witness'.

The prosecution told the court that the couple had had an argument that night, soon after which the 29-year old model and law student, Reeva, had retreated to the bathroom. Oscar, it is said fired the rounds through the door thereby killing her instantly. Reeva's mother said that she dearly wished she could have been with her daughter at such a time for she could completely understand how terrified her daughter must have been when the shots came through the door.

The defence claimed that Pistorius was riddled with demons from his childhood days, wherein he was in constant fear of not being able to run away from danger, due to his imputed legs and therefore fearful of even the smallest of noises. It was this inherent fear that caused him to fire the shots that day. Mr. Pistorius was seen crying through various sections of the trial and when the photos of Ms. Steenkamp's dead body was shown in court, he was nauseated and vomited.

The trial had garnered a lot of attention both locally as well as internationally. Mr. Pistorius had shot to fame roughly six months before the incident, when he won the Olympics on his carbon-fibre blades. He was globally applauded for his discipline in training and his mastery of the scythe-like prosthetics.