Former South Africa Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius is set to be released from jail on parole, nearly 11 years after killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
Pistorius shot Steenkamp multiple times through a bathroom door on Valentine’s Day in 2013.
The 37-year-old later claimed he mistook her for a burglar and was sentenced by a South African court in 2016 to serve 13 years in prison.
The parole board has set his release for 5 January 2024.
Steenkamp’s mother June Steenkamp chose not to attend the parole hearing on Friday at Atteridgeville prison.
“I simply cannot muster the energy to face him again at this stage,” she said.
Her husband and Reeva’s father, Barry, died earlier this year and she said the strain on them both had been immense.
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“My dear Barry left this world utterly devastated by the thought that he had failed to protect his daughter… The only hope he had left, was that Oscar would find it in himself to eventually tell the full truth,” Mrs Steenkamp’s statement read.
This was Pistorius’s second parole hearing in under a year.
His first parole bid was struck out in March because he had not completed the minimum detention period.
That was later ruled a mistake by South Africa’s Constitutional Court, leading to Friday’s parole hearing.
Pistorius won gold medals at the Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and London 2012 Olympic Games.
Both of his feet were amputated when he was 11 months old as a result of a congenital defect; he was born missing the outside of both feet and both fibulae.
He was the 10th athlete to compete at both the Paralympic Games and Olympic Games.
