Saturday 5 April 2014

Pistorius Trial: Witness Timelines 5 (A. Stipp)

Anette Stipp (married to Johan Stipp, direct view from 72 meters to Pistorius home)


Was lying awake in bed with the flu and a cough.
Leaned over her husband to look at bedside clock.
Saw 3:02am but clock was 3-4 minutes fast.
Suddenly heard three loud bangs, sat up on the edge of the bed.
Asked husband what they were, he said “gunshots”.
She did not doubt it as she had already heard gunshots in the past. 
She was fully alert and asserted that she could not have been sleeping through a previous shot.
She can see Pistorius' bathroom and toilet windows from her bed.
She can also see Pistorius' neighbor's house.
She saw bright lights in Pistorius' bathroom window.
It seemed to her that the left-hand pane of the triple slider was open.
She also saw light, albeit less bright, in the toilet window.
(Lawyer asserts bathroom light did not function.)
She saw that the whole top story of the neighbor's house was lit.
These lights stayed on all through the subsequent activity.
Barely moments after the three bangs, the screaming started.
It was a female voice (100% sure) and continuous, not separate secreams.
She got up and went to the small balcony that she can see out onto from her bed,
to see if she could tell where the screams were coming from. 
She heard a female voice screaming and screaming but with no words.
The screaming sounds were not muffled, but loud and clear. 
(Lawyer hints that this indicate the screams were coming through bathroom open window, not in locked toilet.)
After a few moments on the smaller balcony with her husband, they went through the room to a larger balcony.  
The screaming seemed to be coming nearer.
She thought maybe the woman was coming down the street.
She said to her husband "It must be a family murder".
He replied that then he should go and help as there might be children involved.
He went in and began calling security on the phone while pulling on clothes.
His first call to security was not answered.
(Lawyer claims that this is an error: it was answered.  Contradiction?)
He tried 10111 police number.
Then he called security again. 
During this time, Anette was talking to him, telling him what numbers to try.
The screaming was going on continuously.
After some minutes, she turned to go back into the bedroom.
As she was standing on the threshold she saw the time on the clock: 3:17am.
At this point she heard a man also screaming: two voices together.
She said "There's also a man screaming now."
Then she heard three more bangs in rapid succession.
She could not tell the difference between these sounds and the previous
sounds, also three in rapid succession.  
She and her husband thought they were all gunshots.
She has heard gunshots before.
Her husband told her to get inside because they didn't know where the shots were coming from.
She knows that the first sounds were only three bangs in the silence.
But for the second sounds, she says that she may have missed the first bang
because she was calling to her husband about phone numbers.
Once the man’s voice started, she heard both voices at different pitches at the same time.   
The woman’s screaming was continuous.

On Feb. 21 she was awoken by sound tests of loud arguments at 3am.   
Could not distinguish man or woman's voices, but said there was no sound of screaming like what she heard on Feb. 14. 
She thought it was a sound test (she was correct).
On March 18, 2014, she was awoken by the sound of a man screaming.
She said it sounded like a man's voice screaming at a higher pitch and a lower pitch.
She thought it was another sound test (she was again correct).
She again says it did not resemble what she heard at all. 
Man's voice, and separate, not continuous screams.
Lawyer suggests (but does not state) that a man and a woman screamed in the sound tests.
Witness seems very unconvinced.  Actual facts not stated.

On the morning of Feb. 14 she still didn’t know who it was.
She did know from her husband that a man had killed his girlfriend.  
She wrote on her morning chat group that the thing she would never forget was the screaming.   
Then her maid came in.  
The maid slept on the ground floor at the back of the house.
The maid said that she had heard crying, first thought it was a baby, then a woman.

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