A Zejtun shopkeeper and his two sons have been acquitted of grievously injuring a man they caught trying to shoplift from their store twice.
The case dates to December 2012 when Joseph Micallef, 57 and his sons Clydon, 30, and Luke, 26, were also charged with the illegal arrest and destruction of evidence after CCTV footage capturing the incident was allegedly "erased by mistake".
The police had received a phone call from the shop owner reporting that Anthony Seisun had been apprehended stealing whisky bottles from GM Discount Store in Zejtun.
Police arrested the thief at the scene and found two bottles of whisky in the lining of a jacket he had been wearing.
Mr Seisun, who was subsequently convicted of theft, was certified as having suffered a cut to the cartilage of his right ear, needing stitches. Such a wound is classed as “grievous” as it pertained to the facial area.
Taking the witness stand at the Micallefs' trial, Mr Seisun claimed he had been attacked by the three men and an unidentified dark-skinned man as he was browsing the spirits section. The beating had been a brutal one, he said, leaving shoe marks on his face. The dark-skinned man was ordered to clean up the blood, added the thief.
The doctor who had treated him testified that Mr Seisun had suffered bruising to his forehead, cheeks and lower back. He also suffered from superficial scratches, a bite mark accompanied and a torn ear. The injuries suggested a beating, concluded the doctor.
Prosecuting officer Carol Fabri had informed the court that the accused men had insisted that Mr Seisun's injuries had been self-inflicted. He had bumped into the wall several times, she reported them as saying, adding also that no blood had been found on the wall.
Taking the witness stand, the elder Mr Micallef said he acted in self-defence as he had feared that the thief could have been carrying a concealed weapon.
He explained the man's bloodstained face by claiming that the thief had bumped his own head against the sharp-edged metal shelving in a bid to escape.
Mr Micallef handed the police a CCTV recording of the first shoplifting incident. Footage of the second incident and the alleged beating, however, had been “erased by mistake”.
Mr Micallef handed the police a CCTV recording of the first shoplifting incident. Footage of the second incident and the alleged beating, however, had been “erased by mistake”.
Luke Micallef told the police that, while driving to his girlfriend's house, the CD containing a copy of the CCTV footage of the second incident had slipped off his dashboard and out of the car window. He had not delivered it to the police immediately as he “had no idea that it would be so important,” he claimed.
Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera held this account to be truthful, noting that Mr Seisun had initially claimed to have been beaten by Luke and Clydon Micallef, but had then said that he had been facing the wall and could not identify his attackers. He had claimed that the dark-skinned man had also beaten him, but this man was not arraigned or summoned as a witness by both the prosecution and defence.
Mr Seisun's inability to visually identify the people who had been beating him left open the possibility that the injuries had been inflicted by the dark skinned man.
The court therefore upheld the self-defence argument and acquitted the accused.