Claire Magri, girlfriend of Anthony Borg, il-Bona, told a court this afternoon that she picked up the gun he had fired before he was stabbed to death and gave it to the first person who approached her because she was afraid someone else might hurt himself.

A tearful Ms Magri took the witness stand in the trial by jury of Allan Galea, who stands accused of stabbing Mr Borg in Marsaxlokk village square on February 21, 2010.

Ms Magri, who had spent 10 years in relationship with the deceased, had been arraigned in 2011 and charged with having given false evidence during the inquiry into the murder.

She had admitted to the charge.

She told the jury that she had first declined to mention the gun because she was afraid she would get into trouble.

She said she saw the deceased fire two shots into the air, after which he flung the weapon to the ground. He was subsequently stabbed by the accused, she said.

She described how the deceased’s brother had rushed into the PN club and told her that his brother wanted to speak to her. She went out, panicking upon seeing the accused approach Mr Borg and shouting.

“Twanny told me: ‘Claire, go into van.’ Those were the last words he told me,” she said in between sobs.

“I didn't enter. I stood by the door of the van. Twanny didn't hurt anyone. He threw the weapon to the ground,” she said, describing how he slipped on the kerb before he was stabbed.

“He said: ‘Ahhh, Allan’ and collapsed on his back. Allan then went to him and stabbed him in the chest. I started screaming: ‘No, don’t kill him’,” she said.

She started calling for help and for an ambulance and the police to be summoned.

Walking past the church, she spotted the gun on the parvis.

“I was afraid that I or someone else would get hurt. I saw someone approach whom I didn’t quite recognise at the time and asked him to take it,” she said, referring to the man who ran the PN club bar, Paul Borg.

“Then I fainted and my family came on site and took me to the health centre.”

Leading the cross-examination, defence lawyer Giannella de Marco honed in on why Ms Magri had decided not to tell the police about the gun.

Ms Magri repeated that she was afraid for people’s safety and that she wanted to protect Mr Borg (the barman) but when she was asked why she hadn’t done the same with the knife Mr Galea had allegedly used to stab the deceased, Ms Magri said she hadn’t seen it.

The witness was reminded of the differing version she had initially given to the police, where she had said that she had gone into the van and was only alerted to the incident after hearing screams.

Ms Magri said that she had make a mistake back then, adding that she was now more focused.

“No,” Dr de Marco remarked. “You are now more learned.”

Ms Magri insisted that she hadn’t expressed herself properly in the initial statement, leading Dr de Marco to rejoin that she had, in fact, articulated herself very well.

At the time, Ms Magri had stated that she had only seen a man draw something from his shirt and that Mr Borg subsequently collapsed.

She insisted that she had not heard her boyfriend’s loud, angry, blasphemous telephone calls directed at the accused and challenging him to fight.

Asked about the way her former boyfriend earned money, Ms Magri said that “everyone knew” that he loaned out money.

“Do you know how he extracted money from debtors?” Dr de Marco asked.

“I don’t know, that was his job. It wasn’t my business,” Ms Magri replied.

She was reminded that she had initially denied knowing about the deceased’s involvement with usury.

Lara Lanfranco and Kristina Debattista from the Attorney General's Office are leading the prosecution. Giannella de Marco, Joe Giglio and Steve Tonna Lowell are appearing for the accused while Matthew Brincat and Franco Debono are appearing parte civile for the victim's family.

Mr Justice Antonio Mizzi is presiding over the case