Reeva Steenkamp Biography

Reeva Steenkamp is the model who was shot to death by her boyfriend, Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius, at his home in South African on the morning of February 14, 2013. Pistorius was sent to prison for her killing the next year.

Reeva Steenkamp was born in Cape Town and went to college at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, where she earned a Bachelor of Laws degree in 2005. A striking blonde with blue-green eyes, Steenkamp had begun modeling at age 14, and her career took off after college. She joined the ICE Models agency, appeared as a cover girl for FHM magazine, and appeared in South African ads for Avon cosmetics and Sivana Diamonds.

In November of 2012, Reeva Steenkamp began dating Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee known as the Blade Runner for his prosthetic racing legs. Pistorius was one of South Africa’s most famous athletes, having run on the South African team in the 2012 Summer Olympics. That made it all the more shocking when Steenkamp was shot to death at his home in a gated community near Cape Town on February 14, 2013. Police arrested Pistorius almost immediately on charges of murder; prosecutors later said that Steenkamp had locked herself in the bathroom of Pistorius’s house, and Pistorius shot his 9mm pistol through the bathroom door and killed her.

Pistorius’s legal team did not deny the bathroom shooting but argued that it was not murder, and his family has suggested that Steenkamp’s death was somehow a tragic accident. Pistorius was denied bail in an early hearing, but was later released on bail. His trial began early in 2014. Pistorius was found guilty of culpable homicide, the South African equivalent of manslaughter, on September 12, 2014. He was given a surprisingly short sentence of six years in prison, and released to house arrest after about a year.

However, in 2017, South Africa’s supreme court of appeal (SCA) raised Pistorius’s sentence to 13 years and five months in prison, saying he should have been given the country’s mandatory minimum of 15 years for murder, but allowing credit for his time served in prison to date.