Shocking facts about Oscar Pistorius' murder case

Ahead of the last year's London Olympics, there was intense debate about whether Oscar Pistorius, the South African double amputee have unfair advantage over his natural-legged counterparts.  Scientists were as divided on the matter as were ordinary sports enthusiasts.

As the debate raged, a team of scientists were gathered at Rice University to figure out just what was going on with Pistorius's body. The team included Peter Weyand, a physiologist at Southern Methodist University who had the treadmills needed to measure the forces involved in sprinting. Rodger Kram, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was a track and field fan who studied biomechanics. Hugh Herr, a double amputee himself, was a renowned biophysicist.

Was it cold-blooded murder, as police claim, or did Pistorius think he was shooting at an intruder? Lawyers will argue, a verdict will be reached and observers around the world will debate, but only one man knows the answer, and he's sitting in a holding cell, awaiting word on whether he'll go free before South Africa's trial of the century

The trio, and other experts, measured Pistorius's oxygen consumption, his leg movements, the forces he exerted on the ground and his endurance. They also looked at leg-repositioning time—the amount of time it takes Pistorius to swing his leg from the back to the front.

After several months the team concluded in a paper for The Journal of Applied Physiology that Pistorius was "physiologically similar but mechanically dissimilar" to someone running with intact legs. He uses oxygen the same way natural-legged sprinters do, but he moves his body differently. Pistorius, won and competed in the Olympics.
Today he faces another debate:  Did he intentionally kill his girlfriend or it was a mistake?  While South African police and the legal team battle to answer this question in a Valentine Day murder case that shocked the world, here is an interesting piece on 10 shocking facts about Oscar Pistorius's murder case put together by USAToday that might interest those who have been keenly following the debacle:
1. The killing. The most important facts of the case are not in doubt: Early on Valentine's Day morning, Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee Olympian who is arguably South Africa's biggest sporting star, shot through a bathroom door at his home in Pretoria and killed his girlfriend, 29-year-old model and law school graduate Reeva Steenkamp. Was it cold-blooded murder, as police claim, or did Pistorius think he was shooting at an intruder? Lawyers will argue, a verdict will be reached and observers around the world will debate, but only one man knows the answer, and he's sitting in a holding cell, awaiting word on whether he'll go free before South Africa's trial of the century.
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