PAROLE FOR OSCAR?

Oscar Pistorius’ family are grateful and in good spirits ahead of his possible release from prison, but Reeva’s parents still have unanswered questions

- JANA VAN DER MERWE

THEY had prepared themselves for the day the man who shot their daughter would walk out of jail a free man. Barry and June Steenkamp always knew that day would come – but they thought that would be sometime in March 2023, a decade after Oscar Pistorius killed their child on Valentine’s Day in 2013.

The couple were even prepared to travel from their home in Gqeberha to Atteridgeville prison near Pretoria to engage in a victim-offender dialogue session with Oscar Pistorius before his parole hearing.

Barry especially wanted to look the former Paralympian in the eye and ask him to tell him exactly what happened that fateful night his beautiful Reeva was shot behind a toilet door in Oscar’s upmarket home in Pretoria’s Silver Woods Country Estate.

He wanted a frank discussion, the couple’s legal representative, Tania Koen, tells YOU – but they had no objection to him being released on parole. “Barry and June have always said the law has to take its course,” she says. “They understand an offender will at some point be considered for parole.”

But the couple were thrown a curveball when it emerged the date of Oscar’s eligibility for parole had been amended. The Blade Runner’s extended sentence of 13 years and five months for murder, imposed by the Supreme Court of Appeal in 2017, applies from the date he was first sentenced in 2014, initially for culpable homicide.

It recently emerged the department of correctional services (DCS) failed to take into consideration that Oscar had already served 506 days in jail when the appeal decision was made.