After spending five hours threatening to jump off a flagpole high above the street, a man believed to have stabbed a nurse on Thursday put his trust in a magistrate and edged back to safety.

“The magistrate told him that if he came in he would be taken to a hospital and helped to solve his problems,” suspect Noel Calleja’s elder brother Joseph said.

“The magistrate told him he would not be taken to a lock-up. Other people had told him that before but he did not believe them. But he trusted the magistrate. He knew him,” Mr Calleja told The Times shortly after his brother stepped off the roof.

Standing next to each other, he and his sister Frida recounted the ordeal they experienced as they – together with police officers and a psychiatrist – spent hours trying to convince their brother not to commit suicide.

Noel Calleja, 32, from Santa Venera, had been arrested at a farm in Qormi in the morning after more than 14 hours on the run, after he allegedly stabbed MMDNA nurse Jacqueline Dipasquale, 44, from Swieqi on Thursday evening.

He allegedly stabbed Ms Dipasquale at least 12 times in her abdomen and back. She also sustained facial injuries but her condition was yesterday described as stable.

During an interrogation following his capture, he told the police he had hidden the knife on the roof of a block of apartments at the Ta’ Farsina Housing Estate in Qormi.

When the police took him on site at about 4pm, they walked him up to the roof of the block of flats in Triq tal-Ħlas where he said he had hidden the weapon. It is around two streets away from where the stabbing took place.

As they were looking around, he managed to escape, jumped over a three-course ledge onto the top part of a third-floor balcony, and sat on the horizontal flag pole jutting out into thin air.

The weapon was not found.

Wearing a pink T-shirt and grey shorts, Mr Calleja looked quite relaxed as he sat on the flagpole using its ropes for support.

He chain-smoked on Rothmans Blue as relatives and residents of the block of apartments handed him coffees and cold drinks.

At one point, he ran out of cigarettes and another packet was handed to him straight away.

Some relatives, including Joseph and Frida Calleja, were on the roof imploring him to come back inside.

“I heard about what happened from the news. I headed here immediately and tried to speak to him. I told him that I had already told police, the day before, that he acted the way he did because he was blinded by love. He felt betrayed by her. He trusted her,” Mr Calleja said, relieved that his brother was finally safe.

Members of the Civil Protection Department were on site with safety equipment while an attempt to cover the ground with mattresses was speedily abandoned when Noel Calleja saw the activity below and threatened to throw himself off his perch.

Police Superintendent Lawrence Cutajar, Inspector Fabian Fleri and, at a later stage, Police Inspector Sharon Tanti, were all trying to convince Mr Calleja to return and speak to them calmly.

Although they were imploring him “to take their gentleman’s word”, it was not clear what he was requesting and what he was being promised. “...you’ll get me,” he was heard saying at one point.

Hundreds of people from nearby homes, among them many children, gathered to watch the drama unfold. Several were seen clutching their mobile phones to shoot videos and photographs.

Nearly three hours into the drama, and as Mr Calleja smoked one cigarette after another, psychiatrist David Cassar, from the Mater Dei Hospital’s Crisis Intervention Team, joined the others on the roof.

At about 8pm, Magistrate Ian Farrugia, who is holding an inquiry into Thursday’s stabbing case, came on the scene, went up to the roof and ordered everyone to leave except for Mr Calleja’s brother.

Sometime later, Mr Calleja was seen inching his way towards the roof and was helped up.

Still on the balcony, he hugged his brother and the magistrate to the applause of the onlookers.

Sources said Ms Dipasquale had been working as an MMDNA nurse for about three years and had previously worked as a nurse in prison.

In December 2009, she was allegedly caught attempting to smuggle heroin and cannabis into prison inside her handbag. She is facing criminal charges over the case.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.