Oscar Pistorius, who has served half of his sentence at the Atteridgeville Correctional Centre, west of Pretoria for the murder of Reeva Steenkamp, is now eligible for parole, but it has emerged that the proper parole procedures were allegedly not followed by authorities at the start.
Pistorius was sentenced for murder in 2015.
The Steenkamps’ lawyer, Tanya Koen, says the parole board had decided to convene late last month, but Steenkamp’s parents had not been consulted.
Pistorius killed Steenkamp, on Valentine’s Day in 2013. On that day, the world woke up to the shocking news that Pistorius had shot and killed Steenkamp at his house in Pretoria.
Pistorius fired four times through the door of his bedroom toilet where Steenkamp was.
He has maintained that he mistook her for a burglar.
He was initially found guilty of culpable homicide, but when he appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeal in 2015, that was changed to murder.
Convicted killer and former Paralympic star Oscar Pistorius’ pending parole: Tania Koen
In December 2017, Pistorius filed an application to the Constitutional Court seeking to overturn a higher prison sentence handed down by the Appeals Court in November of the same year.
The Supreme Court had increased his sentence by 13 years and five months. The court more than doubled the charge from six years for shooting dead Steenkamp.
Senior legal reporter, Karyn Maughn shares more:
