The Convenience Shop in Birkirkara seems to hold a special attraction for one armed robber.

Daryl Luke Borg, 34, was wrongfully arrested for a hold-up there in 2013. Six years later, as a regular customer at the shop, he decided to enter for a different purpose – to rob it at gunpoint.

He did not get away with it.

Earlier this week, Borg, who has a criminal record, pleaded guilty to carrying out the hold-up on June 11, 2019, and was placed on probation for three years.

On August 7, 2013, he had been arrested by CID on suspicion of carrying out a hold-up at the Convenience in Birkirkara. The following day he was charged in court and remanded in custody.

On the same day, however, the Birkirkara district inspector received confidential information that the man responsible for the hold-up was not Borg but a certain Roderick Grech, who immediately admitted his involvement. Borg was released.

The incident made headlines and led to an investigation by the Police Board.

The board found there had been a breakdown of communication between different sections of the police, the CID and Birkirkara district officers, when the two men were arrested separately for the same crime.

Borg later filed for action claiming a breach of human rights for his illegal arrest, detention and arraignment, eventually winning €150 in compensation.

Fast forward to this week, when a court was hearing the case concerning a 2019 hold-up at the Birkirkara store. Magistrate Marse-Ann Farrugia said Borg had been recognised as the thief through CCTV footage and had also been identified by the shop’s employees since he was a regular customer.

She noted that Borg had seven convictions on his criminal record, four of which over theft, two for threatening his mother and one over simple drug possession. 

Borg admitted to breaching several court orders as well as committing the crime during the operative term of a suspended jail term.

The court upheld the recommendation of a probation officer who, in a pre-sentencing report, recommended that Borg be placed on probation because he was on the right path, striving to kick his drug addiction.

The officer told the court that Borg began taking drugs when he was just 15 but had started out on the road to reform last year when he was jailed for nine months over another crime. 

Magistrate Farrugia also took into consideration the fact that Borg returned the money he had stolen during the robbery.