The two Britons who chased and caught a thief making his escape returned a bagful of stolen jewellery worth about €25,000 to Sterling Jewellers in Sliema, it emerged yesterday.
But North Yorkshire police officer Rick Harper and his friend Darrin Gordon both felt they did nothing extraordinary.
“We didn’t do anything special. We did what any other person would have done,” Mr Harper said yesterday afternoon at the airport just before check-in.
The two men were here on holiday and happened to be walking up Tower Road in Sliema on Tuesday morning when they heard a woman scream.
“I saw a salesgirl come out of the shop. She was screaming at the top of her voice. I saw a man running down the road and thought it was a case of bag-snatching,” Mr Harper said.
When he and Mr Gordon managed to catch the fleeing man they found the bag he was carrying full of jewellery, including rings, bracelets and necklaces, which had just been stolen from Sterling Jewellers.
As a reward and in gratitude for their action, Sterling Jewellers director Romina Grech Fenech presented the two men with a silver Maltese cross just before their departure. “So you’ll remember Malta when you see it,” she said.
They were also given a book on Malta by the tourism authority.
The two men asked Mrs Grech Fenech about the salesgirl, who is fine but still under shock. Their last day in Malta was one big rush, especially because they had to testify in court against the man they had caught.
Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera also thanked the policeman for his “brave deed”.The alleged thief, Vladimir Maksimov, from Russia, denied stealing from Sterling Jewellers and from another jewellery shop in Mdina on Saturday.
When the court registrar asked him for his particulars, which is routine, the man said he was 16 years old, which made the magistrate and members of the public in the gallery double take as he did not seem to be so young.
“It was really strange going to court. We hadn’t planned to go there and, obviously, we didn’t have a suit, so we wore jeans,” Mr Gordon said.
“We would definitely come back but, maybe, we would just stick to diving,” the two joked.