Marco Pace known as Il-pinzell, was jailed for 12 years this morning after  admitted to charges of attempted murder in a six-hour shootout in Qormi in 2005.

He was arrested by the members of the  Special Assignment Group on February 15, 2005 after the shootout, in which he held out against the police using a shotgun and a machine gun. Another man, Mario Vella, was also involved. He was jailed for seven years last year.

Mr Pace was out on bail. In 2011 he was arrested for drink-driving and threatening a woman and a police officer. A few days previously, he was caught driving in Xemxija without a licence and. In 2009 he was charged with trying to run over a woman.

He pleaded guilty to the Qormi shootoout today instead of undergoing trial after a plea bargain agreement.

Police fire tear gas towards a Qormi house before raiding and arresting its occupants following a six-hour stand-off in which shots were fired at the police, in this 2005 picture taken by Darrin Zammit Lupi.

“I want to die like Scarface,” Pace had told his terrified girlfriend at the time. 

In court, Yanika Abdilla had recounted an extraordinary story of how drugs, sex, violence and shooting were a typical day for her and Mr Pace. 

Ms Abdilla described herself as more like a slave than a girlfriend to him and he had forbidden her from leaving the place. She was essentially a maid who would get paid in cocaine.

Such was his utter disregard for those close to him that on the day before the incident, on Valentine’s Day, he had locked her up in the kitchen while he had sex with Kelly Micallef, a girl who had just moved in with them.

The day in question started as any other, with the couple taking a vodka-and-cocaine breakfast together with Mr Vella and Ms Micallef.

He left, as he did normally, for some three hours and returned with a supply of cocaine. Then, at about 6.30 p.m., Mr Pace’s mother, Giovanna, who was 53 years old at the time, phoned her son. When they ended their conversation, however, she failed to say goodbye to him.

At that he flew into a rage and marched over to her house armed with a hammer ready to smash the door down. To make matters worse, his father was standing in the balcony and dropped a Heineken bottle into the street out of fear, Ms Abdilla said.

His anger reaching a new intensity, he went back to his house, fetched a shotgun, walked over to his parents’ house and shot at the door. It was then his mother called the police.

He then returned to his own place and the police made a series of calls on his mobile phone, which he ordered the women and Mr Vella to answer. He also instructed them to threaten the police.

He told Mr Vella to say he was standing next to gas cylinders and would put a bullet in them to blow everyone to kingdom come.

At one point the police fired tear gas into the house but Mr Pace, sitting on a bed, carried on smoking cocaine as Ms Abdilla ran around the house with wet towels and blankets trying to seal up the windows and doors.

He ordered her to go into the kitchen for a soup ladle used for cooking cocaine and all this while the room was full of tear gas, she said.

When it became unbearable inside, they all went up on the roof and she helped Mr Vella through a window.

She climbed to the highest part of the roof, overlooking the main street where police were stationed, and shouted out that Mr Pace was going to throw her off the roof.

The other three were at the lower end of the house nearest to the Mrieħel flyover, with Mr Pace holding the machine gun, Ms Micallef behind him handing him bullets and Mr Vella crouched behind her.

She could recall Mr Pace firing a shot at the flyover in what she described as a “fearful show”.

They moved back inside and Ms Micallef swallowed some pills and fell asleep. Mr Pace started smoking cocaine again and Mr Vella sat at the end of the bed not knowing what to do.

Ms Abdilla said the police managed to get into the house from the roof and arrested them. She also claimed they beat Mr Vella.

Giannella de Marco and Steve Tonna Lowell were defence counsel.