Fabio Psaila, the man police believe was present during the failed hold-up on an Attard jeweller two weeks ago, may have been injured during the criminal act, The Times has learned.

Mr Psaila, 36, of Ħamrun, is wanted for questioning by the police and is still at large.

Police sources said it was “unlikely” Mr Psaila had left the country but it was possible he could have been hit during the hold-up and was nursing an injury.

The hold-up failed when the victim’s son wrestled with the criminals and took the shotgun from one of them. The son then shot one of the alleged criminals, Darren Debono (It-Topo), in the foot and according to police sources, he allegedly tried to shoot at the others as they fled the building.

In a rare move last week, the police published a mugshot of Mr Psaila asking the public’s help in trying to locate him. According to the sources, this public call for help has not yielded concrete information leading to Mr Psaila’s whereabouts.

The police have warned that anybody helping or sheltering Mr Psaila would be committing a criminal act, as would be those who maliciously supplied false information. “It is probable that somebody from his clique is giving him shelter,” the sources said.

Former police inspector and lawyer David Gatt, who was charged in court last week with being the mastermind of a number of high profile hold-ups – including the one in Attard – was also accused of helping Mr Psaila flee the police.

Mr Psaila is not new to crime. Suffice to say that in a sentence delivered last year on a case going back eight years, Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera remarked that she had rarely seen a criminal record like his – 16 pages long.

The magistrate went on to point out that Mr Psaila had no less than 24 convictions from the criminal court with sentences that ranged from fines to suspended jail terms.

In this particular case, in which Mr Psaila was accused of making illicit use of a Maltacom line belonging to somebody else, the magistrate decided to give Mr Psaila a second chance and put him on a three-year probation order.

The magistrate’s conclusion was based on evidence given by a Franciscan priest who had regular contact with Mr Psaila and said the man had changed his life.

The priest, Fr Mark Enriquez, who first knew Mr Psaila as an altar boy, said the man now lived with and cared for his ill mother.

Mr Psaila was apprehended in March 2002 and accused of making fraudulent calls to Italy by clipping on to the telephone line that belonged to a mechanic’s garage.

The case was later suspended indefinitely (it was resumed last year) after Mr Psaila was caught red-handed in Italy that same year with another Maltese man collecting a packet containing four kilograms of cocaine and marijuana from a highway in the outskirts of Catania.

Mr Psaila was believed to be a drug courier for a network that shipped drugs from the Netherlands to Malta via Italy.

Eventually, the police busted the drug ring which had as its masterminds at least five prison inmates, who directed operations from Corradino Correctional Facility. In all, 19 people were arraigned on various drug related charges.

In Italy, Mr Psaila was sentenced to four years in prison.

In March last year, Judge Joseph Galea Debono rejected Mr Psaila’s appeal from a suspended sentence after he was found guilty of harassing his former partner at her Birżebbuġa apartment during the night.

In his decree the judge even reprimanded the first court for being too lenient with Mr Psaila despite having had a string of cases, some of which involved aggravated theft, possession of firearms without a police licence and escaping from the police lock-up.