Police were told that Carmelo Fino was missing from St Vincent de Paule home some six hours after staff first noticed his disappearance and eight hours after the 83-year-old last wandered out through the open gates in the middle of the night.
“He headed straight outside. No one stopped him,” said Inspector Paul Camilleri when testifying on Monday at the start of criminal proceedings against six healthcare workers and security officers who stand accused of causing Fino’s death through negligence.
Rhys-Paul Xuereb, 26, nurse, Jose’ Thomas, 45, now a cab driver, Thomas Zammit, 50, health carer and Jacqueline Cassar, 55, Ivan Dimech, 47 and Emanuel Aquilina, 58, security officers, are pleading not guilty to involuntary homicide and wilfully permitted the victim to suffer.
All six were charged under summons.
Headcount confirmed Fino’s absence
When the case kicked off today, the court heard about the incident which took place on June 28, 2022, the frantic police search that followed and the discovery of Fino’s “almost mummified” corpse days later in the grounds of a Birzebbugia events venue.
A senior nursing officer from the home turned up at the Paola police station at around 11:45am to report that one of their elderly residents was missing.
His absence was first noted when the new shift took over from night shift staff at around 7:00am and a headcount of the ward soon confirmed that Fino was not there.
An internal investigation kicked off immediately and workers at the home scoured the premises, looking all over the place in an attempt to track down the missing resident.
But all was in vain.
That was when they turned to the police, explaining that Fino was a vulnerable person who needed medication and could not stay outside the care home for long. Besides, it was summer and the heat made the situation worse.
“We were informed long after,” said Camilleri.
The magistrate on duty that day directed the police to continue their investigations as police work.
Investigators gathered more information from the home.
Xuereb, Zammit and Robert Belli were the healthcare workers on duty that night.
Belli, who is facing separate charges, made a written declaration saying that at around 5:00am he had gone to Fino’s ward to serve tea. The other patients in the room had told him that Fino was in the toilet.
So he left Fino his cup of tea and went away.
Police searched all over the home while staff carried head counts of residents in every ward.
Since wards were inter-connected, perhaps Fino might have mingled with other patients, the search party thought.
“We even searched the chapel and all over the place,” said Camilleri.
Police also roped in the civil protection department and K-9 dogs and as night approached, they also used infrared drones whilst roaming the areas around the home, searching through Paola and Luqa.
But the search gave no results.
While checking CCTV footage from SVDP, police called in Fino’s nephew to help them identify the missing person.
“No one stopped him”
There were security cameras overlooking the outer gates of the residence.
Footage from those cameras showed a male figure exiting the main building at around 2:45am.
He circled the roundabout twice, peeped into the room occupied by the security guards and headed back to the home.
But then he briefly went round in a circle before heading straight out of the main gates that were open.
“No one stopped him,” said Camilleri, as he described those last moments before Fino wandered out into the night.
Other CCTV footages tracked the man along the route he took towards Luqa.
“But we lost track of him close to LIDL,” said the witness.
Police questioned Belli about his written declaration.
He said that he was “confused and didn’t know what to write.”
Security officers on duty that night opted for silence when questioned.
Cassar, as head manager, simply said that after assigning duties she had gone to her office and did not exit until morning.
The healthcare workers also chose not to answer any questions, except for Xuereb who told police that that night he was “overworked. He could not manage all the patients and did not know exactly where each of them was.”
“Almost mummified” corpse identified through DNA tests
Over a fortnight later, a corpse was found under a prickly pear tree inside the grounds of an events venue at Birzebbugia.
The body discovered on July 14 was “in an advanced stage of decomposition.”
It was “almost mummified,” said Camilleri.
Samples taken from the corpse were compared to those taken from Fino’s son who travelled purposely to Malta from the UK. Those confirmed that the body was Fino’s.
A police sergeant from Paola district confirmed that a report was filed at 11:45am on the day Fino went missing.
When he asked the SVDP manager why they took six hours to report, he was told that there had been an internal search all over the home.
“They only came to the police when all proved futile,” said the sergeant.
The witness had assisted in the police search that ensued, checking all over the district and stopping at cemeteries.
He was told that Fino suffered from dementia.
“Such persons appear to have a habit of going to such sites,” he explained.
“I tried to look for him in every way,” said the sergeant naming several commercial establishments where he had looked for CCTV footage.
“But all gave negative results.”
Alerts were published though the police system and the media.
After hearing Monday’s testimonies the court, presided over by Magistrate Marse-Ann Farrugia, decreed that there was sufficient prima facie evidence for the co-accused to stand trial on indictment.
The case continues. AG lawyer Sean Gabriel Azzopardi and Inspector Paul Camilleri prosecuted.
Lawyer Franco Debono is counsel to Xuereb, Dimech, Cassar and Aquilina.
Lawyers Antonio Depasquale and Beppe Darmanin are counsel to Zammit.
Lawyer Maria Karlsson in counsel to Thomas.