CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Prosecutors in the Oscar Pistorius case will add two firearm charges believed to relate to recklessly firing guns in public to the indictment against the double-amputee athlete, who is already due to go on trial for murder and illegal possession of ammunition.
National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Nathi Mncube said that Pistorius' lawyers received a letter Tuesday advising them that the charges would be added and Pistorius also would face them at his trial in March next year.
Mncube said the additional charges were already raised against Pistorius but were not in the original indictment served to him in August because these offenses are alleged to have occurred in the Johannesburg region, a different court jurisdiction to Pistorius' fatal shooting of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in the South African capital, Pretoria, on Feb. 14.
Prosecutors had to seek permission from South Africa's new National Director of Public Prosecutions to "centralize" all the charges, Mncube said, so they all could be heard in the same trial at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria. Pistorius' murder trial is due to start March 3.
