World

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Journalists camp outside the police station in Brooklyn, east of Pretoria, Monday, Feb. 18, 2013 where athlete, Oscar Pistorius spent a fifth day in custody charged with the shooting death of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Pistorius faces a bail hearing in court tomorrow on the same day that Steenkamp is to be cremated in her home town Port Elizabeth on the east coast. (AP Photo)

The family of Oscar Pistorius' slain girlfriend wants answers, her mother told a Johannesburg newspaper, as South Africans braced to hear why prosecutors believe a national hero murdered the model who was shot multiple times.

June Steenkamp, Reeva Steenkamp's mother, told The Times in a front page interview published Monday: "Why? Why my little girl? Why did this happen? Why did he do this?"

"Just like that she is gone," the newspaper quoted her as saying in what it described as an emotional telephone interview. "In the blink of an eye and a single breath, the most beautiful person who ever lived is no longer here."

Pistorius, who remains in custody in a red-brick, one-story police station in Pretoria, is set to return to court Tuesday for the start of his bail hearing. It will be the first opportunity for the prosecution to describe evidence police gathered against the 26-year-old double-amputee runner and the reasons why he was charged with murder. Prosecutors allege the killing was premeditated.