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Friend: Pistorius fired guns in public
South Africa Pistoriu Heal
Oscar Pistorius hands a note to his defense team as he listens to cross questioning about the events surrounding the shooting death of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, in court during his trial in Pretoria, South Africa, Tuesday, March 11, 2014. Pistorius is charged with the shooting death of Steenkamp, on Valentines Day in 2013. (AP Photo/Kevin Sutherland, Pool) - photo by Associated Press
PRETORIA, South Africa — Oscar Pistorius fired guns in public in the months before he killed his girlfriend — once out of a car sunroof on a road and once in a crowded restaurant, a onetime friend said at the athlete's murder trial Tuesday, drawing an aggressive effort from the chief defense lawyer to pick holes in his testimony. The account by Darren Fresco portrayed Pistorius as a reckless hothead infatuated with firearms and seemingly drifting down a precarious path before he fatally shot Reeva Steenkamp through a closed toilet door at his home before dawn on Feb. 14, 2013. Fresco's description of how Pistorius once berated a police officer fit the prosecution's attempts to cast the double-amputee athlete as prone to flashes of anger and blinded by an inflated sense of entitlement at a time when his public image was that of a clean-cut poster boy for overcoming adversity.