PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Using witness accounts of a panicked nighttime phone call from Oscar Pistorius begging for help and his desperate pleas for Reeva Steenkamp to stay alive, the defense at his murder trial tried to reinforce its case Monday that the double-amputee Olympian fatally shot his girlfriend in a tragic error of judgment.

Johan Stander and his daughter Carice Viljoen, neighbors and friends of Pistorius, testified that they were at the runner’s villa soon after the shooting on Feb. 14, 2013 and that Pistorius was praying, trying to help Steenkamp breathe and urging her to live.