“I want to die like Scarface,” Marco Pace, Il-Pinzell, told his terrified girlfriend, holding a shotgun in one hand and a machine gun in the other as the police got ready to launch a raid on his house, jurors heard yesterday.

A breakfast of vodka and cocaine fuelled his acute paranoia

Yanika Abdilla told the court an extraordinary story of drugs, sex, violence and shootings, where a typical day for her and Mr Pace would begin with a breakfast of vodka and cocaine which fuelled his acute paranoia.

It was the first time, she said, that she was telling the full story of what happened inside the house that night.

She took the witness stand on the third day of the trial by jury of Mr Pace’s close friend, Mario Vella, also known as In-Nanak. According to the prosecution, Mr Vella was an accomplice in the attempted murder of a police officer during a stand-off that lasted hours in Mill Street, Qormi on February 15, 2005.

Ms Abdilla said she wanted to bring out the truth and even waived the right not to testify in case she incriminated herself.

Amidst the “total madness” of that night, she could recall Mr Pace telling her he wanted to die like Scarface, a film and character he was obsessed with. He wanted to kill police as they were killing him. As he was telling her this he cradled a shotgun in one hand and a machine gun in the other.

Their drug habit was very bad in the weeks leading up to the incident, she recounted, with the couple using 100 grams of cocaine every two days. As a result she suffered dire symptoms such as incontinence; she would urinate as she walked around the house, from which she never left.

‘More like a slave than a girlfriend’­­

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.

Mr Pace’s paranoia was so extreme that he would lift Mr Vella against a wardrobe to check that the police were not hiding up there. Whenever this was done, Mr Vella, who already had bad eyesight would hit his head against the wardrobe. It was these incidents which she believed had finished off his eyesight.

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.

I was forbidden to leave the place. Essentially a maid who got paid with cocaine

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 above and arrested them. She also claimed they beat Mr Vella.

At the start of the afternoon session, jurors were taken to look over the crime scene. Court-appointed architects showed them the plans of the scene and what they had found the day after the incident.

Prosecuting lawyers Aaron Bugeja and Maxine Cassar closed their case while defence lawyers Edward Gatt and Anġlu Farrugia are expected to make their case this morning.