Man acquitted of injuring men who attacked his car

A court has cleared a man of involuntarily causing grievous injuries to two men who had damaged his car when they intervened in an argument he was having with his girlfriend.

Lydon Xerri was charged in connection with an incident, which occurred in the car park of a commercial establishment at Bahar ic-Caghaq in February 2015.

The accused and his girlfriend at the time had been having an animated argument inside his car, which was parked outside the venue when a stranger had opened the car’s passenger door and intervened.

The interloper was told to go away and Xerri then tried to drive off, but found his path to be blocked by roadworks.

As Xerri reversed his car to find another exit, another stranger had allegedly jumped onto the bonnet, hitting the car with his fists and smashing the windscreen.

A third-party who had allegedly witnessed the incident had later given an account of the incident to a police sergeant who repeated the story from the witness stand.

Xerri was charged with having caused involuntary grievous bodily harm to the two men, involuntary damage to third party property and with having breached a conditional discharge.

But in her assessment of the evidence magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech noted that neither of the two alleged victims had testified, one having died since the incident and the other choosing not to do so as not to incriminate himself in separate proceedings against him over the same incident.

The court saw how, while the accused had driven straight to the police station to file a report on the incident, the alleged victims had only gone to file a report 14 hours after the incident and had sought medical assistance only upon the advice of the police, the day after they filed the police report.

“Any further remarks would be superfluous,” the court observed, pointing out that the accused’s version, confirmed under oath, had also been corroborated, while the version given by the alleged victims had lacked ‘truthfulness and logic.’

A third party eyewitness had not been summoned to testify, observed the court, dismissing the case against Xerri.