JOHANNESBURG (AP) " After his sentencing hearing last week, convicted murderer Oscar Pistorius was mistakenly ushered to a vehicle carrying Barry Steenkamp, father of Reeva, the girlfriend he killed. A police officer pulled open the sliding door before realizing the error. Surrounded by journalists and onlookers, Pistorius stepped away, made a phone call and was soon driving away in a car that had arrived to collect him.
The mishap outside a Pretoria courthouse came toward the end of a three-year drama in South Africa's wood-paneled courtrooms as well as in the global arena of public opinion. It nearly thrust together two men described as broken " defense lawyers say the double-amputee Olympian is emotionally devastated, and the prosecution says Steenkamp is shattered by the loss of his daughter.
Ahead of the July 6 sentencing of the athlete, a television interview with Pistorius is reviving questions about the former star who, despite intense media coverage of his trial, seems unknowable to many who speculate about what exactly happened on the night he fatally shot Reeva Steenkamp in his home early on Valentine's Day 2013. Did he kill her intentionally or after mistaking her for an intruder, as he maintains? Did his tears on the witness stand express true remorse or were they an exercise in self-pity and a bid to garner sympathy?
The documentary on Britain's ITV, to be broadcast late Friday, appears to be an effort by Pistorius, a multiple Paralympic champion who also ran at the 2012 Olympics, to sway public opinion even as he has suffered setbacks in the courts. South Africa's M-Net will also screen the documentary.
In interview excerpts reported by some media, Pistorius said he doesn't want to "waste" his life by going back to jail, where he already spent one year on an earlier conviction of manslaughter for Steenkamp's death that was overturned in favor of the murder conviction. An appeals court determined that Pistorius intended to kill " whether an intruder, according to his account, or his girlfriend, by the prosecution's account.