Yana Mintoff Bland's son, who had rushed to his mother’s assistance during a stabbing incident allegedly sparked off by her former lover’s jealousy, today testified that he could not state with certainty whether his mother’s aggressor had shown any signs of being wounded.

Daniel Mainwaring was testifying in the compilation of evidence against his mother’s Romanian ex-partner, Gheorghe Popa, who on the night of October 24, 2016, had allegedly first attacked the woman inside her Tarxien home before turning the knife upon her son who answered her cries for help.

“My interaction was very brief. I ran in the room, he stabbed me and I left the room... If he had five stab wounds at the time, I would have probably noticed, but I can't say for sure,” Mr Mainwaring declared under cross-examination by defence lawyer Benjamin Valenzia.

After the violent incident, police had discovered the alleged aggressor hiding up a tree outside the Mintoff residence nursing multiple stab wounds which forensic experts deem to have likely been self-inflicted.

Mr Mainwaring explained how on that fateful evening, he had been playing the ukulele with friends in the villa next to his mother's residence, when he heard certain banging sounds. Sensing that something was wrong, he crossed over to his mother's home, taking only some 30 seconds or one minute to reach the scene.

Having on an earlier occasion testified how he had heard his mother gasping and pleading, the witness confirmed that he had indeed acted upon instinct. “I had an instinctive reaction. I heard my mother pleading and it was clear that she was in a desperate situation,” the young man told the court, presided over by Magistrate Joseph Mifsud.

“My initial reaction to run in there was purely defensive...I thought, and rightly so, that something was wrong. Gheorghe Popa was trying to kill her and had stabbed her in the chest,” continued Mr Mainwaring as he recalled the events of that October evening.

Asked about the accused's temperament, the witness described his mother's former partner as rather unstable, lacking empathy and verbally aggressive. He said Mr Popa had been “physically possessive” of Ms Mintoff and had even been aggressive towards her on a number of occasions, yet the witness declared that he had never seen the man commit “an act of physical violence” against his then partner.

Yet Mr Mainwaring had allegedly never confronted the man about such matters since he was not “the type to be reasoned with”.

Asked whether he had carried anything to help him defend his mother against Mr Popa’s assault, the witness reaffirmed that “it happened as I had described it. We have been doing this for months now. My interaction was very brief. I ran in the room, he stabbed me and I left the room”.

Parte civile lawyer Joseph Giglio questioned the witness about the language used to communicate with the accused. “All of our functional interactions were in English,” replied Mr Mainwaring.

A police sergeant from the Paola police station who was present when the accused released his statement after his arrest, next testified that Mr Popa had spoken to the police in English, in the absence of an interpreter. Indeed, the suspect had not expressed a wish to be assisted by an interpreter, the officer declared.

A scene of crime officer also testified how he had lifted samples of blood from the stairs but not from the bedroom inside the Tarxien villa, pointing out that he needed permission when conducting such a task. The case was adjourned to September when the hearing of forensic experts under cross-examination is to bring to an end the evidence stage.