Police have apologised for breaking into an elderly woman’s home by mistake and informed her family they will be paying for a new door, her son told Times of Malta.

Mario, the son of 95-year-old Teresa, said the police contacted the family after Times of Malta revealed how officers forcibly entered her home last August, thinking they were breaking into a building that housed illegal migrants.

Several officers involved in the raid and some of their superiors visited his mother’s Marsa home over the weekend to apologise to the family for smashing her house door open by mistake.

“They acknowledged their mistake and were very polite and gentle with us. We genuinely appreciated their apology,” Mario said. “They also informed us they would be paying for a new door to be installed, as the broken one cannot be fixed.”

The family asked to go by their first names so as not to identify the location of their home. 

Speaking to Times of Malta last week, Teresa’s sons said months had passed since the police smashed the lock, broke the door and caused significant damage but nobody had yet contacted them to take responsibility for the incident, apologise or offer compensation.

Thankfully, their elderly mother was not at home at the time.

But they were flustered nonetheless, as they only discovered the open door by chance two days later and initially thought burglars had broken into their mother’s house to rob her. PN MP Darren Carabott first flagged the case, questioning how it could have happened.

Mario said the police explained to them that when the incident took place they tried to reach the family but could not establish contact.

He said the family have now put the incident behind them and thanked the police for contacting them to make amends.