S Africa`s Pistorius hit with two more gun charges

Johannesburg: South African Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius has been formally charged with two additional gun-related offenses, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The charges add to those Pistorius already faces over the February 14 killing of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp and illegally possessing ammunition. "The charges are related to the Contravention of the Firearms Act," Nathi Mncube, spokesman for the National Prosecution Authority, said today. The new charges relate to two incidents of Pistorius discharging a firearm on two separate occasions before Steenkamp`s death. The new charges had been expected, as part of the prosecution`s effort to centralise disparate gun charges against the sprinter in an effort to paint him as gun crazed. Pistorius is accused of firing a gun in a Johannesburg restaurant and separately out of the sunroof of a car. "Pistorius has been informed about the charges" Mncube said. The double amputee, known as the "Blade Runner" for the fibreglass prosthetic legs he uses in competition, shocked the world when he admitted to killing Steenkamp, a blonde model and law graduate. He has however denied murder, saying he shot her through a locked bathroom door in his upmarket Pretoria home because he thought she was an intruder. Pistorius catapulted to fame at last year`s London Olympics as the first double-amputee to compete against able-bodied athletes. But the killing sent shock waves around the world and since then his reckless past and love of fast cars, beautiful women and guns has emerged in the media. One newspaper has dubbed him the "Blade Gunner". Pistorius has long been open about his love for guns. The sprinter slept with a pistol under his bed at his upmarket home in a high-security Pretoria estate for fear of burglars, he told Britain`s Daily Mail last year. He once took a journalist interviewing him to a shooting range. Just weeks after he shot Steenkamp, Pistorius`s father Henke, said white South Africans must own guns because the ANC government does not protect them.