Oscar Pistorius faces a parole hearing that will decide if he will be freed from prison, a decade after he shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
The former Olympic and Paralympic athlete, known as the Blade Runner, has applied for parole and could be freed from prison within weeks after serving half of his 13-year-five-month sentence.
A parole board, which will start its hearing today, must determine if Pistorius will be allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence on licence at his uncle’s home in South African capital city, Pretoria.
A spokesperson for the Department of Correctional Services said: “The board must determine whether the purpose of imprisonment has been served.”
A decision is expected to be announced in days or weeks.
His six-month televised trial in 2014 caught the attention of viewers all over the world – less than two years after he made history at the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Here, Sky News looks back at Pistorius’s rise and fall.
First double-leg amputee at the Olym
Oscar Pistorius was born with both fibulas (the smallest of the two lower leg bones) missing, which resulted in doctors amputating his legs below the knee at 11 months old.
Six months after the operation he was given his first pair of prosthetics – a moment he claims in his autobiography Blade Runner defined the rest of his life.
“I believe that it was at this time in my life that my personality was shaped, and that my family was instrumental in laying the foundation stones of my competitive nature, and of the man that I am today,” he wrote in the late 2000s.
He showed little sporting prowess at first but was always told by his parents he could achieve just as much as his able-bodied peers.
When he reached private secondary school he got access to better quality, lighter prosthetics that allowed him to move faster.
He did long-distance running, played rugby, and water polo – but at the age of 16 shattered his knee during a rugby game.
Frustrated by the slow recovery, he was advised to replace endurance running with sprinting to ease the pressure on his joints.
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At London 2012
Three weeks after his first sprint he competed in a 100m race, winning with the best time of any double amputee ever.
Months later, in the autumn of 2004, he competed in his first Paralym in Athens – winning the 200m gold.
The excitement built around his potential and his race results made him increasingly determined to compete against non-disabled athletes.
In 2007 he ran against able-bodied competitors for the first time – a 400m contest in Rome – where he finished second.
But athletics officials were concerned and a media debate began to question whether his ‘blades’ gave him an unfair advantage.
In 2008 he was devastated by the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF)’s decision to ban them, but a bitter legal dispute ended in him having the ruling revoked on appeal by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Although he was now able to compete in the Olym, he failed to qualify for Beijing.
But in 2011 at the World Championships he became the first amputee to win a medal for a non-disabled world track event.
Solidifying his status as the Blade Runner, he competed at London 2012 as the first double-leg amputee in the history of the Olym. He then won gold at the Paralym.
In November that year he met Reeva Steenkamp through a mutual friend and immediately asked her to be his date for an award ceremony that evening.
Trainee lawyer Steenkamp was ‘more than a model’
Reeva Steenkamp was two years older than her boyfriend.
She was born in Cape Town but moved to Port Elizabeth where at 15 she was scouted by an agent at a school beauty pageant.
While her modelling career looked promising, she went to university to study law in case things didn’t work out.
Successive jobs saw her dye her naturally dark hair blonde and move to Johannesburg to find her fortune.
She did magazine shoots for the likes of FHM, but those close to her described her as “more than a model” – down to earth and not particularly fame hungry.
Alongside shoots she was still pursuing law and in 2011 applied to the bar – while her TV career also took off with a regular slot on a reality show.
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Pistorius with Reeva Steenkamp weeks before her murder
She met Pistorius at a motorsport event in November 2012 and the pair quickly started a relationship.
Three months later he shot and killed her at his home in Pretoria.
Valentine’s Day 2013
In the early hours of Valentine’s Day 2013 emergency services were scrambled to Pistorius’s high-security compound in Pretoria.
He told them he had shot Ms Steenkamp, 29, through a closed bathroom door, having mistaken her for an intruder.
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Inside the house where Oscar Pistorius killed his girlfriend
She was pronounced dead at the scene and Pistorius, 27, was arrested on suspicion of her murder.
His trial began on 3 March 2014 at Pretoria’s High Court.
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Inside the courtroom
With cameras allowed to film South African trials, the world watched as the prosecution laid out its timeline of events.
On the evening of 13 February, neighbours claimed they had heard the couple arguing, something Pistorius denied.
He claimed they both went to bed around 10pm but struggled to sleep due to the heat.
In the early hours of the next morning Ms Steenkamp went to the bathroom.
While the prosecution claimed she had gone there to escape him following the argument – Pistorius insisted he didn’t hear her get out of bed and mistook her sounds for those of a burglar.
Frightened for his life, the amputee said he took the 9mm pistol he kept under his bed and ran without his prosthetic legs along the corridor to the bathroom.
When he found the door locked he shot four times through it.
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Oscar Pistorius during trial
The defence told jurors he went back to the bedroom to put on his legs when he realised Ms Steenkamp was nowhere to be found before returning to break down the door with a cricket bat.
But dramatic reconstructions in court proved he was still walking on his stumps when he used the bat.
The prosecution also claimed neighbours had heard Ms Steenkamp scream before the sound of four gunshots, which suggested Pistorius knew who he was shooting.
TV trial brings reconstructions, vomit and tears
The trial attracted millions of viewers from around the world – interested to find out how Pistorius had gone from Olympic and Paralympic glory to being accused of murder in a matter of months.
It lasted for six months, of which Pistorius gave testimony for a week.
The athlete regularly broke down in tears and vomited several times as the pathologist who performed the post-mortem examination on Ms Steenkamp’s body gave graphic descriptions of her injuries.
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Reconstruction of the night of the murder at trial
At one stage, the prosecution displayed distressing images of her corpse by mistake.
Memorably, the prosecution staged several reconstructions of the night of the murder, which saw Pistorius forced to walk on his stumps around the court room.
Its key argument was the height of the marks on the bathroom door.
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Bullet holes in the bathroom door from Pistorius’s house displayed in court
According to the prosecution, screams heard by neighbours came from Ms Steenkamp before she was shot.
But the defence claimed they were from Pistorius once he realised what had happened. They also alleged that the four “gunshots” were the sounds of him breaking down the door with the cricket bat.
Pistorius said this was done after he put his prosthetics back on – but experts proved the bat marks were consistent with him still having been on his stumps.
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A policeman re-enacts the night of the murder with the cricket bat
A originally unearthed by Sky News of Pistorius at a shooting range being shown to the jury was another key moment.
In it he looks at a watermelon he uses as a target and says: “It’s not as soft as brains but f*** it is a zombie stopper.”
The chief prosecutor forced the athlete to look at the pictures of Ms Steenkamp’s injuries, saying: “You saw how the bullet made the watermelon explode. You know the same thing happened to Reeva’s head.”
Other firearm incidents, including shooting a gun inside a restaurant, were also used against him.
There was a month-long interruption of proceedings when the court adjourned to consider whether Pistorius was mentally ill – but ultimately he was proved medically fit.
Culpable homicide conviction upgraded to murder
On 12 September jurors found him guilty of the lesser charge of culpable homicide – South Africa’s equivalent of manslaughter.
Addressing the Steenkamp family he said: “I wake up every morning and you’re the first people I think of, the first people I pray for.
“I can’t imagine the pain and the sorrow and the emptiness that I’ve caused you and your family. I was simply trying to protect Reeva. I can promise that when she went to bed that night she felt loved.”
The following month he returned to court for sentencing and was given five years.
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Judge Thokozile Masipa
He only served a year before he was released from prison to serve the remainder under house arrest.
Prosecutors and the Steenkamp family were outraged and filed an appeal.
The court eventually agreed and in late 2015 upgraded his charge to murder before his sentence increased to six years in mid-2016.
Still unsatisfied, given he would soon be eligible for parole, prosecutors appealed against the “shockingly lenient” six-year sentence imposed by the original trial judge.
In late 2017 it was finally doubled to 13 years and five months.
Pistorius lodged an unsuccessful appeal to get the original charge and sentence reinstated – but failed in April 2018.
Steenkamp family: ‘He killed her out of anger’
There was some uncertainty over when Pistorius would have served half his sentence – and therefore be eligible for release.
The court had ruled that his term should be backdated to the beginning of his original sentence in October 2014, which he argued meant he was eligible from February 2021.
Others were arguing it would not be until 2024.
Meanwhile an NBC Dateline documentary, The Rise and Fall of Oscar Pistorius, drew widespread criticism over claims of bias towards the former Paralympian.
It also emerged last year that Pistorius had met Ms Steenkamp’s father Barry as part of South Africa’s restorative justice programme or “victim-offender dialogue”.
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Barry and June Steenkamp attend Pistorius’s sentencing
He and Ms Steenkamp’s mother appeared on ITV’s This Morning to mark the 10-year anniversary of their daughter’s death.
Mr Steenkamp said the family believes “he killed her out of anger” and that he cut the meeting short as he “didn’t get the answers I wanted”.
He described the experience as “traumatising”, while his wife said she chose to write him a letter instead for fear of “what I would do if I went there”.
“He had taken the most precious thing that we got from God, I wrote to him all the things he’d taken away from us, Reeva’s wedding, her wedding dress, she never got to do her law degree,” she told the show.
“We just love her and miss her so much, a part of our life has gone… but we’ll see her one day and that’s what we look forward to.”
The International Paralympic and Olympic Committees have not ruled to prevent Pistorius competing professionally again once he is out.
