A man returned to his Marsaxlokk home to find that the aluminium window frames of his yacht, which he kept in the driveway pending refurbishing, had disappeared.

The following day, a neighbour told him he had seen a man in a van take the frames and had taken note of the vehicle’s registration number. The man in the van turned out to be Danrof Vella who was yesterday conditionally discharged for a year for stealing the aluminium window frames, which, he said, he assumed were about to be thrown away.

Magistrate Doreen Clarke heard that, on March 3, 2014 at about 7.30am, Mr Vella, from Żabbar, was driving around Marsaxlokk in his van. He spotted the aluminium frames in the driveway and thought he could make some money selling them for scrap.

He said that he knocked at the door of the house but no one replied. He even looked around the area, hoping to find someone to ask about the frames. He then decided that, since they were outside and in a corroded state, they were being thrown away. He therefore loaded the frames on to his van and sold them for €300, that is 90c a kilo. The frames had no glass panes.

Alexander Maniscalco testified that the frames were in fact the windows of his yacht, which he had removed to carry out some maintenance work on. He placed them in his driveway because they were too bulky to put in the garage.

The court pointed out that the frames were in the driveway and not in the road and, therefore, Mr Vella should not have assumed they were to be thrown away. Police Inspector Johann Fenech prosecuted.