Foreigner helping police in dead girl's case

The police were yesterday holding an Arab national to help them in investigations into the death of Alexandra Paysova, a 17-year-old girl from Russia, who was found unconscious on the doorstep of an apartment block in Wilga Street, Paceville in the early hours of Monday.

Sources said the police were awaiting the results of the toxicological tests that would determine whether she died of an overdose or not.

An autopsy indicated she died of cardio respiratory failure, which could be both drug induced as well as natural. However, puncture wounds in the girl's arm led the police to treat her death as an overdose and this in order to ensure no evidence is lost in case it results to be so.

The girl was found at about 2 a.m. after the police received an anonymous telephone call that a woman had passed out on the pavement.

The sources said the girl, who was in Malta on holiday with her cousin and a friend, had been here before. The police were initially at a loss about her identity and late on Tuesday released her photo in a bid to establish her identity. But at about 8.15 p.m., her friends went to the St Julians police station with the girl's passport to report she had not returned to the hotel and that they had not seen her for some 20 hours.

The police had made a lot of headway and were now piecing the final moments of the girl's life, the sources said. It is suspected she was in the company of a Libyan man shortly before she died.

The girl arrived here on July 15 and was due to leave this Saturday.

Police Inspector Norbert Ciappara is investigating.