An octogenarian yesterday admitted to having been involved in a hit-and-run in Lija on Wednesday but insisted he was under the impression he had mounted a pavement.
George Borg Cardona, 83, said that until he saw the CCTV footage he never imagined he had crashed into a car.
He was speaking to Times of Malta at his house after the newspaper located his car parked in a narrow street in Attard.
Mr Borg Cardona immediately admitted it was him who was driving the white car seen in the CCTV footage and said he had already spoken to the police about the accident. He was waiting to collect the relevant papers to be able to open an insurance claim.
He said he was on his way to a doctor’s appointment in his white Rover saloon at about 8.30am when he crashed into a parked Peugeot 306 as he was passing through the narrow Annibale Preca Street in Lija.
Yes, I was driving the car, but I hit a pavement or something
The owner of the Peugeot, Christina Pace, posted the CCTV online and it soon started doing the rounds on Facebook.
She said she was left with a damaged wishbone, a bent front wheel, a smashed front bumper and crumpled mudguard, front and back passenger doors, apart from other damage caused by the huge impact as the Rover somehow rode along its passenger door on two wheels.
Still, Mr Borg Cardona insists he did not immediately realise what had actually happened.
“Yes, I was driving the car, but I hit a pavement or something and that was when my car lifted and landed on the other car. You cannot see it well in the CCTV footage. On impact, my head hit the car roof and I closed my eyes. When the car was back on its four wheels, I thought I had hit my own car and when I saw cars coming from behind me, I drove off,” he said.
He later stopped and saw he had no damage to his car. In fact, the Rover sustained minimal damage and the dents on its doors were there before the incident.
He said he had been called in by the police and shown the CCTV footage. When asked, he said that the police had not told him whether they would be filing criminal charges against him for failing to report an incident and driving away from the scene of a traffic accident.
The police said, when contacted, that investigations were still under way and they did not have any update.
Mr Borg Cardona was, until January last year, a chairman of the Industrial Tribunal before he had to step down over allegations that he had presented forged medical certificates to a court during a case involving his grandson, who, at the time, was 17 years old.