In South Africa, the friend of Oscar Pistorius who took the blame for him accidentally firing a pistol under a table in a restaurant has testified. Darren Fresco said he has gone to the shooting range with Pistorius before, so he assumed the athlete was competent with weapons. Fresco then described how he had passed his gun under the restaurant table to Pistorius, who subsequently “fired a shot.” The charge of firing a gun in a public place is part of the prosecution’s attempts to portray the 27-year-old Pistorius as a firearms-obsessed hothead. Pistorius shot dead model Reeva Steenkamp on February 14 last year, but he said he mistook his girlfriend for an intruder. -- Mornings @ ANC, March 12, 2014.