A Gozitan man was handed a conditional discharge for stealing a stonemason’s equipment, damaging a wall and relapsing.

Magistrate Joe Mifsud fined 43-year-old John Vella, from Xagħra, €1,000 and ordered him to pay €575 in legal costs after he found him guilty of aggravated theft and criminal damage in relation to the 2011 theft of a winch and stone slabs from a house belonging to Mgr Joseph Vella Gauci in Victoria.

The court had heard how in 2011, Mgr Vella Gauci reported the accused for parking his vehicle in a way that blocked his access into the cleric’s property.

The police were summoned and were told that three courses of the roof’s dividing wall and a builder’s winch had disappeared.

The accused, who is a relapser, was discharged on condition that he does not commit another crime within the next three years.