A young British woman who was attacked by a man after she told him to stop punching his girlfriend in Paceville last weekend is upset and disappointed that police officers on the scene let him go.

Rachel Ginty said her aggressor, a Maltese man in his 20s, pushed her to the ground, punched two friends who came to her defence – causing one to bleed profusely – and smashed a car window.

What astounded her most, the 26-year-old woman added, was that when policemen turned up they let the aggressor walk away because they had not witness him do anything.

The police were asked about Ms Ginty’s comments but no reply was forthcoming at the time of writing.

“This is not the Malta I fell in love with and moved here for. This is a dark side to Malta. I don’t feel comfortable and protected,” Ms Ginty, who lives and works on the island, said.

The incident happened on the night of May 20 when Ms Ginty and her two male friends were walking towards a taxi stand to head home from Paceville.

“I saw the man holding his girlfriend against a wall and punching her in the head. I told him to get off her. When he turned around, there was rage in his eyes. He told me to f*** off and shoved me on the ground.... There was a concrete slab nearby. He threw it at me but missed, thank God,” she said.

One of her friends intervened to help her and the man punched him in the jaw. The other friend went up to the man and told him to calm down.

“The man punched him across the nose and slit it open. There was a pool of blood on the floor and his shirt was soaked in blood... Even I ended up covered in his blood,” she said.“The man then punched a car window, smashed it and the alarm went off... It was like he was going crazy. Then he went back for his girlfriend,” she recalled.

Ms Ginty stood up and ran to a nearby shop to ask for the police phone number. When the man noted she was calling the police he pushed her against a car. The police turned up at that point and asked her what had happened. Some officers headed toward the aggressor and when they approached him they handed him a tissue to wipe his bleeding fist, she said.

The woman told the police in the UK he would have been arrested.

“The policeman told me they could not do much because he was not being aggressive at that moment. I told them this was crazy. This man had hit three people, four with his girlfriend, there was blood on the ground and he smashed a car window. And he was just walking away. They told me this was Malta and I had to respect the laws,” she said. Ms Ginty said the officers suggested she open a court case against the aggressor. When she got home she called the St Julians police station to report what had happened and was told she had to file a formal complaint in writing. Discouraged by the bureaucracy and the injustice of it all, she decided not to.

“I love Malta but after this incident not so much. This has upset me. I can’t believe people can get away with that sort of thing... I can understand fighting, it happens but I can’t understand the way the police behaved,” she said.