Police stop man who made death threat

The police found a semi-automatic shotgun and a penknife in the car of a man who was stopped by officers when he returned to the bar where he had just been involved in a fight, the court heard yesterday.

Etienne Pace was given a suspended jail term and a stern warning by a magistrate.

"You have an axe hanging over your head and if you commit another crime in these two years, straight to jail you will go," Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera told Mr Pace as she handed down a nine-month jail term suspended for two years.

The court heard that a fight broke out between Mr Pace and Jason Zammit on Sunday at about 9 p.m. inside Michael's Bar in Qormi, the two men having had a long-running disagreement. It reached a climax when Mr Pace threatened to shoot Mr Zammit in the head. When he left the bar to fetch a gun, the victim ran to the police station to alert them.

When the police arrived at the scene, they found Mr Zammit alighting from his Volkswagen Golf and about to approach the bar. They stopped him and found the semi-automatic shotgun and pen knife in the car.

Mr Pace at first pleaded not guilty but defence lawyer David Farrugia Sacco then asked to approach the bench and spoke to the magistrate alongside Police Inspector Sandra Zammit.

Magistrate Scerri Herrera then declared that Mr Pace would be pleading guilty to the charges and informed him that she would hand down a suspended sentence.

Some of the circumstances of this case bore a similarity to the incident at the Nationalist Party club in Mqabba over Christmas, over which Carmel Saliba stands charged with the attempted murder of 20 people when he fired his shotgun at the door of the club. In that incident too, the accused allegedly returned to the club following a heated argument and a pledge of violent revenge and people at the club alerted the police.