South African Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius is now facing more charges in addition to the murder and illegal gun possession charges he faces after killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in February.

A spokesperson for the national prosecuting authority, Nathi Mncube, said to the Associated Press that Pistorius' attorneys received a letter notifying them that firearms charges would be added to the indictment.

The charges are just being added now because they are related to an incident in Johannesburg instead of Pretoria, where the murder occurred. The prosecutors received permission from the nation's national director of public prosecutions to centralize all of the charges and combine them for the one trial.

"The national director has indeed given them that authority and they will be added," he said. "They are not new charges, they were charges that already existed. They were just in a different jurisdiction."

Pistorius faces up to life in prison if convicted of premeditated murder, which the prosecution has alleged. This would carry a mandatory 25 year sentence.

The Olympian has maintained his innocence throughout the entire ordeal and his supporters believe he acted in response to what he thought was an intruder in his home. In his defense, people have cited South Africa's high crime rates as one of the reasons why he was armed.

Prosecutors, on the other hand, believe he killed his girlfriend following an argument in his home, where Steenkamp died.

Pistorius has a history of being reckless; he once was alleged to have shot a gun out of a moving car and another time he avoided a near-death situation when he crashed a boat.