Police trying to identify men in Valletta hold-up

Police investigating last weekend’s attempted hold-up on an elderly jeweller, who had a close brush with a bullet in the ensuing struggle, are still trying to identify the robbers.

Investigators have been collecting and viewing CCTV footage and there is still more to comb through, captured by close-circuit television cameras outside other shops and along the street, sources said.

At this stage, they said, the police could not exclude anything, including the fact that the robbers may have been foreigners.

The hold-up on Zampa Jewellery in St Lucia Street took place early on Saturday morning as Frank Zampa, 79, was about to open his son’s shop. Three armed men, wearing baseball caps and sunglasses, entered the outlet shouting instructions that he could hardly understand.

It went badly wrong for the robbers when he fought back. At one point he lunged at a revolver wielded by one of the men and it went off, grazing his cheek and leaving a round black mark on his skin.

He wrestled with the man as another hit him repeatedly with an iron bar and a third zapped him with some kind of stun gun, which momentarily disables a person with an electric shock. It did not appear to have such an effect on Mr Zampa and the robbers gave up the struggle and dashed off empty handed.