Steenkamp's mother: 'Why my little girl?'

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - The family of Oscar Pistorius' slain girlfriend wants answers, her mother told a Johannesburg newspaper, as South Africans braced to hear why prosecutors believe a national hero murdered the model.

June Steenkamp, Reeva Steenkamp's mother, told the Times in a front-page interview published Monday: "Why? Why my little girl? Why did this happen? Why did he do this?"

"Just like that she is gone," the newspaper quoted her as saying in what it described as an emotional telephone interview. "In the blink of an eye and a single breath, the most beautiful person who ever lived is no longer here."

Pistorius, who remains in custody in a redbrick, one-story police station in Pretoria, is set to return to court Tuesday for the start of his bail hearing.

It will be the first opportunity for the prosecution to describe evidence police gathered against the 26-year-old double-amputee runner and the reasons why he was charged with murder. Prosecutors allege the killing was premeditated.

Pistorius' family denies he committed murder though they have not addressed whether he shot her. When word first emerged about the killing there was speculation in the local media that Steenkamp had been mistaken for an intruder in Pistorius' home. Police have said that was not something they were considering.

Pistorius' top sponsor, Nike, said in a brief statement on Monday that it "has no plans for Oscar Pistorius in upcoming campaigns."

Steenkamp's funeral will be held Tuesday in her hometown of Port Elizabeth on South Africa's southern coast, her family said. It is to be a private ceremony at a local crematorium, closed to the public and media.

"We're just taking things one day at a time," Reeva Steenkamp's brother Adam Steenkamp said outside the family home. "But at the moment it's family coming together and the one person who would be the strongest, who held us all together, is unfortunately not here anymore - and that's my sister."

A 29-year-old blond model, law graduate and reality TV contestant, Reeva Steenkamp died last week of multiple gunshot wounds inside Pistorius' upscale house in a gated community in the eastern suburbs of the capital, Pretoria.

Police said they arrived in the predawn hours of Thursday - Valentine's Day - to find paramedics trying to revive Steenkamp and said that she had been shot four times.

A 9mm pistol was recovered from the scene. Pistorius was arrested and charged with murder the same day.