South African athlete Oscar Pistorius has been found guilty of culpable homicide — equivalent to manslaughter — of his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp last year. The charge carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.

A court video posted by The Telegram showed the 27-year-old double amputee, one of the biggest names in world athletics, standing impassively in the dock with his hands folded in front of him, as Judge Thokozila Masipa delivered the verdict.

Pistorius was also convicted of an unrelated charge for firing a pistol under the table of a packed Johannesburg restaurant, but he was cleared of possessing illegal ammunition and firing a pistol out of the sun-roof of a car.

On Thursday the judge cleared Pistorius of premeditated murder, saying prosecutors had failed to prove the Olympian explicitly intended to kill Steenkamp.

Reuters reported that Judge Masipa had based her culpable homicide decision on the fact that Pistorius had acted unreasonably and negligently when he fired four shots from a 9mm pistol into a toilet door in his luxury Pretoria home, killing Steenkamp.

In a bid to have Pistorius charged with murder, the state had argued that he deliberately killed Steenkamp, a law graduate and model, after a row in the early hours of Valentine’s Day last year.

In his defence Pistorius argued that he had fired mistakenly in belief that an intruder had broken into his bathroom and was hiding in the toilet cubicle.