“He had no need to do this to me. I only stopped him because of his seatbelt,” police constable Simon Schembri gasped as he lay face upwards on the road, bleeding profusely after being dragged under a speeding Mercedes driven by 17-year old Liam Debono.
PC Schembri’s shocked reaction was revealed on Friday morning in court as the compilation of evidence against the underage driver, charged with attempted murder, continued.
In a sitting that was primarily devoted to the testimonies of court-appointed experts, presiding magistrate Joseph Mifsud also heard two off-duty officers from the Civil Protection Department who had reached the site of the incident in Qormi Road, Luqa, just in time to administer first aid to the critically injured PC Schembri.
Luca Crisafulli, a rescue officer heading to work and Charles Grima, a station officer who was off-duty at the time, recounted how they had assisted the victim by trying to block the heavy blood loss from his mangled right arm.
READ: Debono knew policeman was beneath his car, witness tells court
Mr Crisafulli had been the first to reach the victim who was lying face up, head towards the pavement, still wearing his modular helmet which was partly bashed open and still conscious.
Whilst applying pressure upon his upper arm to stop the arterial flow, the rescuer had spoken to Mr Schembri to keep him calm and prevent him from losing consciousness.
It was then that the victim had allegedly spoken to the witness, repeating the same words to Mr Grima when the latter joined the first rescuer at the scene.
“Simon, it’s Charlie,” the witness had told the victim, to which the latter had replied: “Why did he do this to me. I stopped him over a seatbelt.”
360-metre long friction mark
Traffic expert Mario Buttigieg, tasked with assessing the scene of the incident and the Mercedes involved in the hit and run, reported a friction mark 359.13 metres long which zig-zagged along the road starting off some 25 metres from the spot where PC Schembri had parked his motorbike next to a bus stop further up the road.
Debris consisting of the officer’s number tag, part of his jacket zip, fragments of his helmet, a lighter, a packet of cigarettes and fibres from the victim’s garments was found scattered along the stretch of road.
Garment fibres had also been found on the Mercedes’s undercarriage, close to the silencer, Mario Buttigieg explained.
The vehicle had suffered no damage upon impact with the victim’s body, but had been damaged extensively when it hit a low wall, with the impact having caused the airbags to inflate. The car was also leaking oil, the court was told.
All this evidence indicated that the Mercedes had been driven at high speed, zigzagging left and right over a long distance and even leaving a striation mark, caused when a vehicle drifts sideways at a critical velocity.
Keith Cutajar, a cybercrime expert, presented his report containing numerous stills retrieved from CCTV footage taken from the scene of the crime.
The court’s attention was drawn to one particular zoomed shot wherein, for a fraction of a second, beneath the slightly raised front part of the Mercedes, one could catch a fleeting glimpse of a shiny object, the visor on the victim’s helmet.
The same expert had also analyzed calls on the 112 emergency line at the time of the incident, extracting some ten calls from the 47 registered between 7.00am and 8.00am.
The first had reached the control room at 7.38am from a female caller who had sounded distressed and who claimed to be calling from the site of the incident.
The compilation continues.
Inspectors Fabian Fleri, Pier Guido Saliba and Chantelle Casha prosecuted.
Lawyers Franco Debono and Amadeus Cachia are defence counsel.
Lawyers Arthur Azzopardi and Andy Ellul are appearing parte civile.