Who Are Oscar Pistorius’s Parents? What to Know

It’s not common that your favorite Paralympian and Olympian is also a murderer. But we live in a world with Oscar Pistorius. Pistorius has a unique story from the get-go. He was born on Nov. 22, 1986, without the outsides of both feet and without both fibulae. His parents made the difficult decision to amputate both of his legs below the knee when he was just 11 months old, but they clearly made the right decision.

Pistorius mastered his first pair of prosthetic legs in just days at 2 years old, and he went on to participate in plenty of sports growing up. After rupturing his knee in rugby, he took up running, which led him to the Paralympics and even the 2012 non-disabled Olympics. But not even a year later, he was arrested for murder.

Below, we take a look at Pistorius’s parents.

Pistorius — the middle child between an older brother and a younger sister — was raised to be a hard worker and determined boy, which is exactly how he grew up to be the first double-leg amputee to qualify for the Olympics. A gold medalist Paralympian, Pistorius had a fall from grace after he shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in 2013. He confessed guilty but claimed he thought he was shooting an intruder, so he didn’t intend to kill Steenkamp.

He was first convicted of culpable homicide, which is a version of killing without intention, and sentenced to five years in prison. But an appeal overturned that verdict in favor of a murder conviction, so he was sentenced to 15 more years in 2015. After serving about half of his sentence, he was released on parole in January 2024.

Sadly, Pistorius’s mother passed away when he was just 15 years old. Sheila Pistorius died at 43 years old after she grew unexpectedly ill. She was misdiagnosed with hepatitis and received the wrong treatment for what was diagnosed a week later as a brain hemorrhage.

Her friend Gillian Silcock brought her to the hospital and told eNCA (via The Epoch Times): “She’d had a brain hemorrhage at that point, but she didn’t go, she didn’t let go and go be with her dad in heaven until the boys got there … when her boys walked in they were able to see her and say goodbye and she waited, because after a short period of time, 15 minutes or so, she went. After her sons arrived.”

Pistorius has often credited his mother with his resilience and pays homage to her with tattoos of her birth and death dates. Before the London Olympics, Pistorius told Sportsmail of his mother:

“She was very special to us. She was very cool; a very hectic, free spirit. She didn’t really comply with much and had a very carefree approach to life … She always said the loser isn’t the person that gets involved and comes last but it’s the person that doesn’t get involved in the first place.”

Pistorius’s father, Henke Pistorius, is still alive. When Pistorius asked his father to sign his claim that the ammo used in the murder belonged to Henke, Henke refused. The prosecutor used this to further her case that Pistorius is deceitful, so it’s unclear what Pistorius’s relationship with his father is like today.