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Johannesburg - As murder accused Oscar Pistorius left a Sandton nightclub after a shoving match with another clubber, some of the crowd shouted “F**k off, you’re going to jail!”, City Press reports.
Three eyewitnesses who were at the upmarket, often invite-only club have told City Press that when Pistorius arrived late on Saturday night he immediately started downing tequila shots and was constantly being photographed with “beautiful” women.
A fourth eyewitness said that other clubbers were being “mean” and “nasty” to Pistorius from the moment he arrived, commenting about his trial as he passed them.
City Press’ own investigation has revealed that at least part of Pistorius’ alleged rant to fellow clubber Jared Mortimer contained a grain of truth – one of his family’s companies rebuilds old army and police trucks to export to security companies.
Mortimer claims that during an altercation – which rapidly escalated from verbal to physical – Pistorius boasted how influential his family was.
“He was showing me photographs of armoured cars on his mobile phone and said, ‘My family supplies the SANDF. [President Jacob] Zuma works for us. I’ll piss on Zuma.’”
Pistorius’ family conceded immediately after news of the athlete’s altercation with Mortimer that his late-night visit to the VIP Lounge was “ill-advised” and “unwise”.
In a statement written by Pistorius’ uncle Leo, the family hotly denied that it was involved with the defence force or that the athlete would have insulted Zuma.
“Oscar was at school with one of President Zuma’s sons and liked him a lot. Oscar also has great appreciation of President’s Zuma’s extraordinary support of the paralympians,” Leo Pistorius said in the statement.
Another Pistorius uncle, Theo, has owned N14 Trucks for years. In the past it’s helped Mechem, a division of Denel, to build and upgrade Casspir armoured vehicles, which are used in peacekeeping operations abroad and for mine-sweeping.
N14 Trucks, however, doesn’t supply armoured vehicles to the military as Oscar boasted.
Industry insiders said the company had an excellent reputation.
Polygraph test challenge
Mortimer said: “How would I even know to make something like that up? Why would I even think about saying that? Oscar is lying through his teeth and that’s why I challenged him to a polygraph test.”
Pistorius’ family has blamed his decision to visit the VIP Lounge on “an escalating sense of loneliness and alienation”.
These feelings were “underlying some of his self-harming behaviour”, Leo Pistorius said in his statement.
Mortimer insists he saw no evidence of grief, loneliness or alienation.
“I couldn’t believe how aggressive and arrogant Pistorius was. I mean, there was certainly no tearful remorse for Reeva [Steenkamp, who Pistorius shot dead last February] in that club that night.”
The athlete claims he was at the VIP Lounge with one of his cousins but Mortimer says Pistorius was with former bouncer Guil Yahav.
Yahav was implicated in the 2002 murder of Patrick Caetano, who was bludgeoned to death with a butcher’s knife at a Kyalami office park. He pleaded guilty to assault.
Mortimer says he greeted Yahav, who is a friend of his and who in turn introduced him to Pistorius.
“Oscar knew one of my friends and said, ‘Oh, you are the infamous Jared Mortimer.’ He was very arrogant and complained that his friends Darren Fresco and Justin Divaris had back-stabbed him. Then he started insulting one of my friends and saying he had enough dirt on him to bury him.”
Mortimer claims Pistorius poked him in the chest and grabbed him around the neck, and that he pushed the athlete, who fell into a chair.
The VIP Lounge’s bouncers intervened and Pistorius left the club.
A fellow patron, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Pistorius came storming out of the club’s VIP section, showed them his middle finger “for no reason” and told them to “f**k off”.
“So we said to him, ‘F**k off, you’re going to jail!’” the man told City Press.
Pistorius’s family has not denied the altercation, but says eyewitness accounts prove Mortimer was the aggressor.
