PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — A month before he fatally shot his girlfriend, Oscar Pistorius cajoled a friend into taking the blame when a gun was accidentally fired under the Johannesburg restaurant table where he and other friends were sitting, according to testimony Wednesday in the double-amputee runner’s murder trial.

“‘Just say it was you. I don’t want any tension around me,'” witness Kevin Lerena remembered Pistorius telling a friend. “‘There’s too much media hype around me.'”