Aug. 19, 1983-Feb. 14, 2013
This woman should never have died such a senseless, violent death at the hands of her boyfriend, the paranoid, rage-a-holic gun nut Oscar Pistorius. Yes, it turns out that this hero to the disabled athlete community, and the first person to have taken part in the Olympics as a track star with state-of-the-art prosthetic legs, had issues. To be fair, in South Africa, violent crime is at outrageous proportions, and it's well-heeled citizens must take extra security measures to protect themselves from the marauding herd of thugs that terrorize South African society.
But famous star athletes, due to their financial situations, can take extra security precautions the average person cannot. Pistorious lived in a gated community with 24-hour security. Yet his paranoia ran so deep he had guns strategically placed all over his home "just in case". We here in the states know all too well that the nutbags who call for more guns for the sake of protection are the ones who live in communities where they are touched the least by minorities and gun violence, a combination many right-wing maniacs equate as going hand-in-hand. Here is a photo taken of his bedside back in 2010, and as we all know, happiness is a warm gun. Nothing like a silver Taurus 9mm pistol with a full clip to help one count sheep when irrational paranoia doesn't let you get any shut-eye-
The couple in happier times-
Unfortunately, a dismaying fact of life the world over is that celebrities like Pistorius always get away with behaving poorly because pretty young women will always be attracted to them. And if he had some sort of bad-boy persona brewing beneath his clean-cut, pretty-boy image, then he would appear all the more alluring to the opposite sex. This does not mean Reeva Steenkamp had to perish in such a manner because she found him attractive, shot four times through a bathroom door in the middle of the night by this lunatic. But what it does mean is that if he had exhibited a previous pattern of abnormal, anti-social behavior, someone should have called him out on it. And if she had any inkling that this dude had problems, she should have stayed away from him. And yes, she dated star athletes and was a reality-show star, something we loathe with abandon here on "Busting Chops", but her life also revolved around intellect and doing good for others, so she gets a pass.
The details of the initial investigation have been well-documented. The original detective assigned to the case was released from it due to his own issues with crossing the law, under investigation for some charges that include murder. then there is the question of the cache of performance enhancing drugs supposedly found in Pistorius' home on the night of the murder. His contradictory story about what happened aside, the facts that have been established are bad enough to seriously question who this man really is. He deserves a fair trial no doubt, but what he doesn't deserve is to make his deceased girlfriend into an active participant in her own demise. What we need to know are the events that preceded this madness, and only Pistorius knows the truth. Don't expect it. A man fighting for his life is going to lie to get out of this situation, so let's celebrate this beautiful, intelligent young lady, a model since the age of fourteen, law school graduate, and a fighter against bullying and violence against women, something to which she needlessly lost her life to.
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