South Africa’s Ministry of Justice and Correctional Services said Pistorius would be released from prison on Jan. 5.

It said that the decision was made after having “assessed Mr. Pistorius’ profile and other material submitted for the purposes of parole consideration.” It added that he was a “first time offender” and had a “positive support system.”

Pistorius, 37, was dubbed the “blade runner” for his speed on carbon-fibre prosthetic legs after becoming a double amputee as a child. He won six Paralympic gold medals and became the first amputee runner to compete in the Olympics at the 2012 London Games and was hailed as a sporting champion.

Steenkamp was a model and paralegal. The couple had dated for several months before Pistorius fatally shot Steenkamp through a locked bathroom door in his apartment in Pretoria. He claimed in court that he had mistaken his girlfriend, then 29, for a burglar.

June and Barry Steenkamp, the parents of Reeva Steenkamp, were “shocked and surprised” when they were informed of an earlier possibility of Pistorius’s parole eligibility, Tania Koen, a lawyer for the victim’s family previously told The Washington Post. June had forgiven Pistorius “because of her faith,” Koen said, and Barry found it “difficult but is ready to start a dialogue.” June Steenkamp did not attend Friday’s hearing because “I simply cannot muster the energy to face him again at this stage,” she said in a statement read by a family friend before Friday’s hearing (Barry Steenkamp died in September).

“I do not believe Oscar’s version that he thought the person in the toilet was a burglar,” June Steenkamp said in the statement. “In fact, I do not know anybody who does. My dearest child screamed for her life. … I believe he knew it was Reeva.”

A South African judge originally convicted Pistorius of culpable homicide, the equivalent of manslaughter, in 2014 after finding that prosecutors failed to prove Pistorius committed murder when he shot Steenkamp. Pistorius steadfastly claimed that he thought he was shooting at an intruder in his house.

In December 2015, prosecutors succeeded in having Pistorius’s original conviction overturned, and South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal found him guilty of the more serious murder charge, ruling that the lower-court judge misapplied the law in finding him guilty of the less-serious charge.

A South African parole board originally denied Pistorius’s request for parole in March, ruling he had not served enough of his sentence. But the department of corrections overturned that decision last week, saying the parole board failed to account for the time Pistorius had served in prison while his murder sentence was being appealed.

Amy Cheng contributed to this report