PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Oscar Pistorius broke down in sobs and howls while testifying at his murder trial yesterday, forcing the court to adjourn as the star athlete was describing the moments he said he first realised he had shot girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp through a toilet door in his home.

“I sat over Reeva and I cried,” Pistorius said, telling how he broke open the stall door in his bathroom last year to discover his mortally wounded girlfriend slumped over in the cubicle. “I don’t know how long I was there for.”

Pistorius has said he shot Steenkamp after mistaking her for an intruder in his bathroom. Yesterday marked the first time he has spoken publicly on the details of the fatal shooting. Prosecutors call Pistorius’ story an intricate lie and maintain he intentionally killed his 29-year-old girlfriend, a model and reality TV show star, after an argument.

The Olympian, 27, is charged with premeditated murder in Steenkamp’s death and faces a life sentence with a minimum of 25 years before parole if convicted on that charge.

On the witness stand, he began to cry loudly while testifying, forcing the judge to rule a brief adjournment. Pistorius didn’t stand up when the judge left, and also started to wail as he sat slumped over on the witness stand, his head in his hands. His brother and sister went over to him in an apparent attempt to comfort him and after a while he left the courtroom through a side door, still crying.

When Judge Thokozile Masipa returned, she called an early adjournment. Pistorius had by that time returned to sit, jaw clenched, in the witness box. Court was to reconvene on Wednesday.

Pistorius pleaded not guilty to murder at the start of his trial and denied in earlier testimony yesterday three other charges against him relating to firing a gun in public on two occasions, and illegal possession of ammunition. On one of the counts two witnesses have testified that Pistorius recklessly shot a gun out of a moving car in September 2012, months before he killed Steenkamp. Pistorius said: “It never happened.”

Led by defence lawyer Barry Roux for the second day of his testimony, Pistorius also said he wasn’t to blame for a shot going off in a busy Johannesburg restaurant because a friend handed him an “unsafe” gun with a bullet in the chamber under the table. That happened weeks before he fired through the door in his home to hit Steenkamp in the head, arm and hip.

Pistorius also said he wasn’t guilty of illegally possessing .38-calibre ammunition in his home because he was safekeeping it for his father and he had no intention to use it.

In a dramatic day, Pistorius had also left the room briefly at one point to change out of his dark suit and into a white shirt and shorts, with his prosthetic legs showing. He was then asked by Roux to take off his prosthetics in court and stand on his stumps by the bullet-marked toilet door, which has stood in the courtroom for much of the trial.