Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee Olympic runner who fatally shot his girlfriend in 2013, was released from prison and placed under house arrest on Monday night Oct 19,2015, a South African official said.
"Oscar Pistorius was placed under correctional supervision tonight," Manelisi Wolela, a spokesman for South Africa's correctional services department, said in a cellphone text message sent to journalists.
Under South African law, an offender sentenced to five years or less in jail can be released after serving one-sixth of the term — in Pistorius' case 10 months.
Pistorius was acquitted of murder last year for the Valentine's Day shooting death of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, but prosecutors have appealed the trial verdict of culpable homicide, or manslaughter, and will seek a murder conviction again at South Africa's Supreme Court on Nov. 3,2015
If Pistorius is convicted of murder by a panel of five judges at the appeal, he faces going back to prison for 15 years, the minimum sentence for murder in South Africa, which no longer has the death penalty.
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