Five youths facing Paceville assault charges get bail

A woman who says she was assaulted by a group of five in Paceville this week presented the court with a plastic bag full of hair she had to cut off after the beating.

The victim told the court that her hairdresser had to cut off the hair because it could not be untangled some days after the incident. She also presented photos taken by the hairdresser that day.

She was testifying in the case against five people – women aged 17, 18 and 19 and men aged 23 and 26 – who stand accused of viciously assaulting her at around 3.30am on December 29, 2024.

In a video clip allegedly showing part of the assault, three women could be seen kicking and slamming a woman lying on the ground.

The court has banned the names of all those involved from being published.

All five defendants were granted bail in a hearing this week. 

In testimony this week, the victim said she was walking up the Eden Cinemas road after a night out in Paceville when she heard one of the accused, aged 19, call out to her.

The two knew each other and had quarrelled over an ex-boyfriend in the past, she said, and the accused had texted her three times in the previous weeks, challenging her to fight.

She said the accused was with a group of people and that at one stage the three females started to hit and kick her, and drag her by her hair. She recalled one of the accused, 18, filming the incident and said video of it was subsequently shared on social media.

The three women attacked her while the men they were with stood by and stopped her friends from intervening to stop the fight, she said. Four necklaces she was wearing were ripped off her in the fight, she said.

The incident left her with a swollen, bruised eye, a broken nose, a split lip and a lot of hair loss due to the manner in which the accused had tangled her hair, she testified.

A hairdresser was unable to untangle her hair and had to cut a lot of it off, she said as she presented a bag of hair as evidence.

Under cross-examination, the victim told the court that trouble between herself and the 19-year-old had been brewing for several months, ever since her ex-boyfriend had cheated on her with the accused. The two had come to blows on another occasion a few months back, she confirmed.

Earlier in the sitting, prosecuting Inspector Roderick Attard testified that the victim was taken to Mater Dei Hospital following the incident. After being discharged from hospital, she filed a police report about the incident on December 31. She had identified the five accused, saying the females had assaulted her while the males had stopped others from intervening.

She also reported that gold necklaces and pendants had been pulled off her neck and were stolen during the fight, with the gold ranging from a value of between €200 to €800 each.

All five accused were arrested on January 8 and arraigned two days later, he testified.

After hearing submissions on bail by the prosecution and defence and seeing that all civilian witnesses had testified, magistrate Giannella Camilleri Busuttil granted bail to all five accused.

They were ordered to sign at a police station three times per week, respect curfew hours, deposit €1,000 each as a bail deposit and be subject to a €2,000 personal guarantee each.

Lawyers Franco Debono and Adreana Zammit appeared for all five accused.