A woman who has been charged with stabbing her neighbour blamed the victim for the fight, which started with a car chase, a court was told yesterday.

The details emerged when Police Inspector Roderick Agius was testifying in the case against Ramona Magri, 31, from Qormi, who stands charged with the attempted murder of Wendy Gauci, 24, also of Qormi.

In a separate case, Ms Gauci is pleading not guilty to causing damage to Ms Magri’s car.

The officer said the dispute began some days before the incident when the two women argued over a man in Paceville. They exchanged a series of threatening SMS messages and the matter escalated, resulting in the fight on Wednesday evening in Qormi.

Investigations indicated that Ms Magri had chased Ms Gauci with her car. At one point they stopped and started fighting in the middle of the road. Ms Gauci used a metal pipe to smash the back window of Ms Magri’s car and the accused reacted by stabbing her in the hand, the witness said.

During cross examination, defence lawyer Franco Debono suggested that Ms Gauci could have caused the injuries to herself before and then threw the weapon away. The prosecuting officer said it would have been very difficult for that to happen, adding that a search was carried out for the weapon but nothing was found.

The case continues.

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