A video by an American crime-scene analyst comparing the sound of a gunshot to a cricket-bat strike was used in the murder trial of South African paralympian Oscar Pistorius on Thursday.
Pistorius' neighbors told the court last week that they were woken by the sound of gunshots and screaming on Feb. 14 last year. Defense lawyer Barry Roux suggested that this was in fact the sound of the athlete smashing through the door with a cricket bat and his own high pitched screams when he found out what he had done.
Pistorius denies murder and says he shot Steenkamp because he mistook her for an intruder.
On Thursday Roux instructed police forensics expert Col. Johannes Vermeulen to watch a video made by Californian Alexander Jason, who describes himself as a "certified senior crime scene analyst."
In the video, Jason attempts to shed light on the gunshot-cricket bat question by comparing audio of the two sounds. The footage was uploaded to YouTube on Saturday and had more than 135,000 views as of Thursday morning.
Jason concluded that heard from 180 meters away "you would have a very difficult time just understanding that the bat strike against the door is not a gunshot. Because when you hear that it makes a definite crack…that you could think is a gunshot, especially if you could not compare it."