South Africa’s Supreme court of appeal has found Olympic athlete, Oscar Pistorius guilty of murder in the death of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. The presiding judge, Justice Eric Leach, in his ruling this morning, ordered the original trial judge to impose a harsher sentence.
The minimum sentence for murder is 15 years in prison. He killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in February 2013 after shooting her four times through a locked toilet door. Pistorius is currently living under house arrest at his uncle’s home in Pretoria, having been freed from prison after serving less than a year behind bars.
It is not yet clear whether he will return to prison immediately, or if he will be allowed to remain in correctional supervision until a new sentence is handed down.
South African law does not make provision for someone to be placed under house arrest for more than five years, so Pistorius will be going back to prison, reports the BBC’s Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg.
He described Steenkamp’s death as “a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions”.