Oscar Pistorius apparently has shot a gun randomly before. Darren Fresco, Pistorius’ friend, testified in the Olympian’s murder trial on Tuesday, saying that Pistorius has fired his gun twice, which he was charged with firearms violation. Fresco told the court that Pistorius shot a gun through a car’s sunroof after an altercation with a policeman and months after that, in an unrelated event, he fired in a busy Johannesburg restaurant.
Event #1: In the first incident, Pistorius became furious with a police officer who had pulled over the car Fresco was driving and handled Pistorius’ licensed gun, said Fresco. Pistorius later fired the gun out of the car’s sunroof without warning, said Fresco. Fresco’s accounts corroborated much of the testimony of a previous witness who was present at the sunroof shooting. When the car Fresco was driving was stopped for speeding in late 2012, Pistorius argued with a police officer who handled his gun, which Pistorius had left on the passenger’s seat. “‘You can’t just touch another man’s gun,'” Fresco recalled Pistorius telling the traffic officer. “Now your fingerprints are all over my gun. So if something happens, you’re going to be liable for anything that happens.”
“Without prior warning, he shot out the sunroof,” Fresco, who was driving, said of Pistorius, who he said was in the passenger seat. Fresco said he “instinctively” moved over to the right side of the vehicle and away from where the gun was shot, and then asked Pistorius if he was “mad. He just laughed,” Fresco recalled. “But it felt as if my ear was already bleeding.”
Event #2: Fresco also testified that at a busy Johannesburg restaurant he handed his gun, a Glock 27 .40 caliber pistol, under the table to Pistorius and the gun fired. Fresco said Pistorius asked him to take the blame for the incident, which he did. The restaurant incident happened in early 2013, about a month before Pistorius killed Steenkamp. “I knew that he had a big love for weapons … my assumption was that he had competency,” Fresco said in court. The gun fired and Fresco said he took the blame for the incident, because Pistorius feared bad publicity.
Pistorius is currently being charged with premeditated murder for killing Reeva Steenkamp, his former girlfriend, on Feb. 14, 2013.