The grieving mother of Pelin Kaya, the young woman murdered on her birthday, recalled how she could hear her daughter’s voice when she visited the Gżira site where a driver rammed into her last month.

“I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her voice. She was telling me: ‘mum what are you doing here?’ It’s very heavy’,” Çiçek Kaya said.

The mother spoke to Times of Malta on Monday, hours after she and other family members attended court to hear the first sitting of the compilation of evidence against Jeremie Camilleri.

Camilleri has been charged with Pelin’s murder, after ploughing his black BMW into her before crashing into a petrol station and a KFC restaurant. Shocking footage shows him walking away from the wreckage unscathed before proceeding to pelting his victim with stones.

Çiçek arrived in Malta 12 days after her daughter, an interior designer, was killed in the 1am incident, just an hour after she turned 30.

Speaking at the Turkish embassy in Floriana, Çiçek sat beside her younger brother, Aykan Ceylan, both wearing pictures of Pelin pinned to their black jackets.

Speaking through an interpreter, the 61-year-old said she brought a bouquet of tulips, all the way from Turkey, to place them on the site where her daughter was killed.

“She loved tulips, she loved nature too,” she said.

She said when she placed the flowers next to pictures of the victim laid by the public and placed her hand on the wall, she could feel her late daughter’s presence.

Screen grab from the video.

“When I went to the site, I wondered if her last words were: ‘mother, did they take my life?’”

She said she felt Pelin in front of her, her soul among the flowers laid in tribute.

“If I die I will meet with her, but I have to think of my other daughters. It felt like the world collapsed on me when I visited the site.”

I just want justice. What else can a mother ask?

She also visited her daughter’s office in Birkirkara.

“I took a pen of hers. She was a tidy person, and the desk was very tidy, how she left it. I could imagine her at her desk. I could even smell her. She was like an angel. They took my angel from me.”

The mother described Monday’s court sitting as a “difficult situation”.

“They took a mother’s heart. They took my child, she was so young.”

Screen grab from the video.

The last time Çiçek spoke to Pelin was through a video call on January 17 in the evening, a day before her birthday.

“She asked me for the exact time she was born,” she said.

“I told her it was a Monday at 5.45pm... actually, she knew the time but she was testing me to see if I remembered. While we were speaking, she was happy and smiling.”

Çiçek Kaya, Pelin’s mother, visited the murder site of her daughter earlier this week. Photo: Miguela Xuereb - Newsbook

She told Pelin she will message her the next day, at the exact time she was born.

“We said goodbye, and the next morning, at 8am we received the bad news,” she said.

Pelin, the youngest of her three daughters, last visited the family in Turkey on December 20 to celebrate the holidays and returned to Malta on New Year’s Day.

Çiçek said she will continue to fight for justice for her daughter.

“It could have been someone else instead of my daughter. I will do my best, as long as I can breathe, I am standing by my daughter’s side,” she said.

Recalling how her daughter was building a career as an interior designer in a country she had fallen in love with, Pelin actually told the family she felt the island was a safe place.

She thanked the Maltese people, the media and the government for their support and said she hopes they will continue to stand by her daughter’s side.

“I just want justice. What else can a mother ask?”