Steenkamps called £20,000 Pistorius offer blood money
PARALYMPIC star Oscar Pistorius offered to pay his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp’s family more than £20,000 as compensation for killing her, a court heard yesterday in Pretoria, South Africa.
The Steenkamps rejected the payment, calling it “blood money”, probation officer Annette Vergeer told a hearing to determine Pistorius’s sentence for culpable homicide.
Vergeer added that Pistorius had raised the money by selling his car, and had also been paying the Steenkamps £350 per month, though the payments had stopped some time ago.
Vergeer recommended that Pistorius, 27, be spared jail because it would be particularly difficult for a double amputee and would threaten to further harm his fragile mental state.
“It is virtually impossible in prison to teach a person how to become a useful member of society,” she added.
Judge Thokozile Masipa, who last month found Pistorius guilty of culpable homicide, is set to deliver a sentence this week. Pistorius denied murder, saying he shot Steenkamp by accident.