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 Colonel Schoombie van Rensburg, the first policeman to arrive at
the athlete's home in an upmarket Pretoria estate, described the
grisly sight that greeted him in the early hours of February 14 last
year.
During his testimony, photographs of Steenkamp's face and body were
also shown accidentally to the court, upsetting Pistorius, who
vomited into a bucket for the second time since the start of the
trial, now in its second week.
Van Rensburg said that on his arrival at the home, he saw
Steenkamp's body lying at the bottom of the staircase covered in
towels and black bags. She had been declared dead by medics by the
time he arrived.
Moments later, he found a "very emotional" Pistorius in the kitchen
pacing up and down.
"I asked him what happened but he didn't answer me," Van Rensburg
told the court. "He was in tears."
 The colonel said a trail of blood led him up the stairs to
Pistorius' bedroom and the bathroom where the Paralympic and Olympic
star shot Steenkamp, whom he says he mistook for an intruder.
Pistorius' lower limbs were amputated as a baby but he overcame the
disability to become the "fastest man on no legs", running on
carbon-fiber "blades" to win gold medals at the Beijing and London
Paralympics. He has pleaded 'not guilty' to murdering law graduate
and model Steenkamp.
Prosecutors are trying to prove that the killing was premeditated.
If found guilty of murder, Pistorius faces at least 25 years behind
bars.
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The court was shown photos of the blood-spattered bathroom floor on
which lay a crumpled, blood-soaked towel and a cricket bat that
Pistorius used to break down the bathroom door after shooting
through it.
The photos showed empty bullet cartridges on the floor and the 9mm
pistol with which Pistorious fired four shots. Steenkamp was hit
three times: in the head, arm and hip.
Asked by state prosecutor Gerrie Nel what condition the firearm was
in, van Rensburg said it was cocked, with the safety catch removed.
"It's ready to fire," he said, when shown a photo. "You just have to
pull the trigger."
Van Rensburg, a police veteran of 29 years' service, was the
commander of the nearby Boschkop police station at the time of the
incident and had been on duty for 24 hours when he was called, he
told the court. He resigned from the police last December.
(Reporting by Tosin Sulaiman; editing by Ed Cropley and Robin
Pomeroy)
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