Barry and June Steenkamp believe the full story has yet to emerge about what happened on the night their daughter was shot dead by Oscar Pistorius, despite his trial ending with a verdict of culpable homicide.
“It’s not, for us, the right verdict… I don’t feel it was justice,” June Steenkamp says in an extended interview to be screened as an Australian exclusive on tonight’s Dateline at 9.30pm on SBS ONE.
“I feel that there’s still a missing link somewhere, I think there’s quite a bit more to the whole thing than has been produced so far,” Barry tells Rohit Kachroo.
He doesn’t fully believe Oscar Pistorius’ account that he thought there was an intruder in the bathroom before he shot four times through the closed door, killing his girlfriend.
“He could have gone to the balcony and shouted for help knowing that somebody was there, he could have pressed the alarm system, all this would have been prevented,” Barry says.
“I think there was more to the whole story coming up to the actual shooting, the killing… if he’s watching, he’ll know what I’m talking about.”
“They’ve missed something, what really happened, only Oscar knows what really happened,” June adds.
The couple say they were shocked when Pistorius was cleared of murder and instead found guilty of culpable homicide in a Pretoria courtroom earlier this month.
“We were shocked, shocked, disappointed. You know, your heart drops. You just want the truth and it’s going in the wrong direction, that’s how you feel,” June says.
“We’re both exhausted, because we never really have a minute without something else comes up… we haven’t really had time to grieve… it is a horrible, horrible thing that we’ve been through, and it’s still going on,” she says.
But despite everything, the couple still want to sit down and talk to Pistorius.
“We don’t know what we would talk about, but I’d like to just sit down with him and let us have a chat,” Barry tells Rohit.
“There’s no hate towards him and that… you actually feel a bit sorry for him. In seconds his whole life changed, and you don’t wish that on anybody, but things did happen, and things happened there that haven’t been brought up, I know that,” he says.
There is no mandatory sentencing for culpable homicide, so Pistorius’ punishment could range from a fine to more than a decade in jail. He’s due to return to court on 13th October.
See the extended interview with Barry and June Steenkamp on tonight’s Dateline at 9.30pm on SBS ONE.
