Oscar Pistorius fired a gun in a busy restaurant and narrowly missed his friend’s foot just weeks before his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was shot dead, it emerged today.

The incident happened last month during a dinner with friends and the 29-year-old model.

The paralympic star was examining the weapon when it went off unexpectedly in the Johannesburg restaurant Tasha’s.

Boxer Kevin Lerena, who was part of the dining party, told South Africa’s Beeld newspaper: “I got a huge fright, because the bullet hit the ground just centimetres from my foot. I must emphasise that the gun belonged to one of Pistorius’s friends.

“Oscar just wanted to look at the gun, and it sort of snagged on his pants, releasing the safety catch. A shot went off. I wouldn’t call him negligent, it was just an accident. He apologised to me for days afterwards.”

The restaurant’s manager Jason Loupis said he heard a “loud bang” but that when he went to investigate, everyone on the table denied it was them.

Mr Loupis said he did not inform the police as he could not be certain that a gun was fired.

The revelations came as it emerged police are investigating a theory Pistorius, 26, killed Ms Steenkamp in a fit of “roid rage” after banned steroids were found at his luxury home in Pretoria.

Officers demanded he be tested for the substances, while detectives also reportedly discovered a blood-stained cricket bat at the house.

Ms Steenkamp, a law graduate, is said to have suffered skull “crush” injuries as well as being shot four times in the pelvis, chest, head and hand. Police believe she was shot in the hip in the master bedroom after finding a bullet cartridge there, before fleeing to lock herself in the bathroom.

Bullet wounds to the top of her head suggest the next three shots hit her through the door as she sat doubled up in pain on the toilet with her hands raised instinctively to protect herself.

Phone records are also being checked after reports suggested the runner could have flown into a rage when Ms Steenkamp received a late-night text from South African rugby star Francois Hougaard.

They were said to be close before she and the “Blade Runner” started dating in November, with him reportedly unhappy that they remained friends.

Hougaard, 24, has insisted the “whole sad ordeal” of her death had nothing to do with him.

As police sealed off the house, Pistorius wept down the phone to best friend Justin Divaris, 27, telling him: “There has been a terrible accident, I shot Reeva. I’ve killed my baba. God take me away.” Pistorius denies murder and claims he mistook his girlfriend for an intruder.

His father Henke said: “There is something fundamentally wrong with our society. We build people up into heroes only to take great glee in breaking them down.”