Blade Runner Oscar Pistorius has been charged for shooting and killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp and will appear in court Friday .
The body of model Reeva Steenkamp was retrieved from athlete Oscar Pistorius' villa in the early hours of Thursday. The model and girlfriend of Pistorius had been shot four times.
The Olympic amputee sprint star, better known as "Blade runner" due to his carbon fiber prostheses, was a national hero and people referred to him as the man who "triumphed over adversity to compete with able-bodied athletes at the highest levels of sport." However, fans worldwide are shocked at this tragic change of events. Companies have already began removing billboards with advertisings of the athlete. South African newspapers plastered the killing across their front pages, relegating a State of the Nation address by President Jacob Zuma in Parliament to a distant second.
The sprinter slept with a pistol, machine gun, cricket bat and baseball bat nearby for fear of burglars at his upmarket home in a secure Pretoria estate, he told Britain's Daily Mail last year. Pistorius loved motorbikes, adrenalin and speed. "He likes fast cars. Every time he comes here, he's got another car," his trainer Jannie Brooks said last year. "He is just built for speed, because the cars have an amazing performance."
Four years ago he crashed his boat in a river south of Johannesburg, breaking two ribs, an eye socket and his jaw.
Pistorius and Steenkamp were first seen in public as a couple last November. For two years running Steenkamp was among men's magazine FHM's top 100 sexiest women in the world. The day before Valnetine's day, the model had tweeted, "What do you have up your sleeve for your love tomorrow? It should be a day of love for everyone," expressing her excitement for the event.
Initially the police didn't confirm the victim to be Steenkamp and only referred to her as a 30-year-old woman, Steenkamp's publicist Sarit Tomlinson confirmed the death of the model.
"Everyone is simply devastated," the publicist, Sarit Tomlinson, said. "She was the kindest, sweetest human being; an angel on earth and will be sorely missed."
