PRETORIA, South Africa — Oscar Pistorius, the South African Olympian and Paralympian — who became a national hero after competing in the London games on prosthetics — was charged with predmeditated murder over the shooting death of Reeva Steenkamp, his model girlfriend.

Pistorius wore a dark suit and wept during the hearing at the Pretoria Magistrates Court. Steenkamp, a model who was dating Pistorius, was shot dead in Pistorius’s home in Pretoria yesterday. 

A bail hearing has been postponed until next week.

“The charge is murder,” Medupe Simasiku, a spokesman for the National Prosecuting Authority said at the court.

Pistorius, dubbed the “Blade Runner” because of his double leg amputation and prosthetic running blades, has won six Paralympic gold medals. He became the first amputee runner to compete at an Olympic Games in London last year and was named by Time Magazine in its list of the world’s 100 most-influential people.

Pistorius was born without fibulas and had both legs amputated below the knee when he was 11 months old.

Pistorius, a 26-year-old who runs with J-shaped carbon- fiber blades, competed in his first able-bodied elite event at the 2011 track and field world championships in Daegu, South Korea.

He got his chance after sport’s highest tribunal, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, in 2008 overturned a ban on him competing against able-bodied athletes imposed by the International Association of Athletics Federations, which said his blades give him an advantage.