Oscar Pistorius Denied Early Release Because Monitors Can’t Be Fitted On His Prosthetics, Steenkamp’s Mother Says He Killed To Keep A Secret

It doesn’t look like convicted killer Oscar Pistorius will be eligible for early release from prison, and it looks like the cause is Pistorius’ prosthetic legs. A new report, though, claims that Pistorius could be eligible for parole in as little as 10 months.

The Daily Mail on Monday carried news that Oscar Pistorius’ request for early release from prison will be rejected. The reason: Pistorius’ prosthetic legs are ill-suited for the electronic monitoring devices that he would have to be fitted with were he granted home detention.

Since Pistorius’ legs were amputated when he was 11-months-old, the sprinter gets around on prosthetic limbs. Those limbs, though, aren’t suitable for wearing the electronic monitoring device for home release prisoners, officials say.

“The device has to be attached physically to the offender’s ankle,” one prison source said. “We cannot use it on false limbs which could be left somewhere static while the offender goes missing.”

Equally unsuitable as a location for the trackers is an offender’s wrist. Prison officials say that the devices are too easily removed if worn on the wrist.

Pistorius was sentenced to five years incarceration for the culpable homicide of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Pistorius was acquitted of premeditated murder in the Steenkamp case, but the South American sprint runner was found culpable in Steenkamp’s death in a case that captivated observers around the world.

Pistorius had been hoping to serve out his sentence at his uncle’s luxury home in Waterkloof, South Africa. His uncle’s estate, which has a gym and swimming pool, is where Pistorius stayed during the seven-month trial for his role in Steenkamp’s death.

Instead, Pistorius will for the time being stay put at the Kgosi Mampuru prison in Pretoria. Sources tell the Daily Mail that, following an initial meltdown when his fellow prisoners heard him sobbing himself to sleep, Pistorius has been quiet and calm in prison.

Even without the electronic monitoring system, Pistorius may be eligible for parole well before some observers would have thought. The latest report says that Pistorius may be able to apply for parole in as soon as 10 months.

In related news, Reeva Steenkamp’s mother, June, has published a memoir, saying that she feels “let down” by South Africa’s justice system. In Reeva, A Mother’s Story, the elder Steenkamp laments the fact that she was not able to be there for her daughter, and she states that she doesn’t believe Pistorius’ claim that he mistook Reeva for an intruder.

Steenkamp maintains that her daughter was likely going to leave Pistorius, and that she fled into the bathroom to get away from him when he was angry. Pistorius, according to her view, then likely fired a single shot into the bathroom before deciding that he had to finish Steenkamp off.

“I think he may have shot once,” Steenkamp writes, “and then he had to go on and kill her because she would have been able to tell the world what really happened, what he is really like.”

“It was Reeva’s bad luck that she met him,” she writes in another portion of the book, “because sooner or later he would have killed someone. I do believe that.”

[Lead image via Thunder Treats]