The moment her son was killed in a building collapse, ISABELLE BONNICI went from being a private person to becoming a public advocate for justice. In her first on-camera interview, she tells Mark Laurence Zammit why she persists in her cause.

Six months after that tragic December day, Jean Paul Sofia’s bedroom lies still and eerily quiet. After he left for work that morning, his mother made his bed as she would usually do. The room has remained untouched since. 

Rays of light infiltrate through the shuttered blinds of a window above what used to be Jean Paul’s desk, casting dark shadows on the melancholic aura that weighs heavily inside the room.

On the desk, a pair of headphones hang over one corner of the computer monitor and rosary beads hang over the other corner. Pictures of him with his parents rest on the window sill and a deck of Uno cards lay on the desk and the shelves. Cushions in the shape of smiling emojis lie on a bean bag on the floor.

“Sometimes, I think he’s just on holiday and he’ll eventually come back home to his room,” Isabelle said.

“For the first few weeks I was very detached from reality and in denial of what actually happened.”

Eventually, reality hit her hard and the feeling of separation grows deeper and stronger.

Isabelle never goes into her son’s room anymore. She says it is too much to bear, and while she leaves the door open, she looks the other way whenever she walks by.

She also never watched the CCTV footage that emerged on the day of the tragedy, showing the moment the building collapsed.

“I don’t have the courage to watch it yet.”

‘Whatever happens, you will always be my mother’

One other thing she has not had the courage to open yet is the last Mother’s Day card that her son gifted her last year. Inside the card, Jean Paul penned a handwritten message promising his mother he would always be there for her.

“Thank you for everything mum. I know we argue a lot and I am always right [smiley face symbol]. But you know that I love you, even though I don’t always show it to you,” the message inside the card reads.

“I appreciate how much you worry about me because whatever happens, you will always be my mother, and nobody can take your place. If you ever need anything don’t hesitate to ask me for help, because just like I always found you to help me, you will always find me. I apologise for all those times when I hurt you with my words. I love you a lot mum. Your sunshine, Jean Paul.”

Jean Paul’s handwritten message to his mother in the last card he gifted her on Mother’s Day. Photo: Karl Andrew Micallef.

Isabelle last saw her son before he left for work on the morning of the incident. The building collapsed two hours later.

“He was such a sweet, kind-hearted boy. He loved me dearly and worried even about the smallest things. Even if I told him I had a headache, he would come check on me to see if I’m feeling better,” Isabelle said.

“He was an avid animal lover. One day he came home from work happily telling me how he had saved a mouse that was trapped in a construction site. That is how kind-hearted he was. 

“And he was also a little stubborn.”

Isabelle said she had long feared Jean Paul would get badly injured at work. Soon after he finished school he told his parents he would start working in construction and they were not too keen about it.

“Every day, I would tell him to find another job, because I always felt worried sick that he would get hurt. Not to this extent, of course.

Jean Paul was found dead and buried under the rubble 15 hours after the building collapsed on him. Photo: Jonathan Borg.

“Then, around three months before the collapse he told us he had found a new job in the air conditioning sector. And we were so relieved. We even promised him we would help him continue his studies and buy a van to eventually be able to start his own air conditioning business.

“But then, on that day, his boss at the new job needed him to go deliver some tools at that construction site. And so, he died in a construction site nonetheless, despite having stopped working in construction.”

Heart-wrenching false hope

For a short period of time following the collapse, Isabelle thought her son had survived. 

A police officer at the Corradino site told her that he had seen Jean Paul being carried out of the rubble and taken to hospital alive. 

Isabelle was elated. But when she went to hospital, staff told her nobody with his name had been admitted.

Jean Paul Sofia was just 20 when he was killed.

"I returned to the site of the collapse and was told that he was still under the rubble," she recalled. 

“As the hours passed during the search my hopes were already shrinking, but I somehow still longed for some sort of miracle. Hope is the last thing to die, I guess.” 

Jean Paul was found, dead, 15 hours later.

‘I hope he died instantly’

It is still unclear whether Jean Paul was alive for some time under the rubble, but his mother hopes he died instantly on impact.

Just like I always found you to help me, you will always find me- Jean Paul’s last Mother’s Day message to his mother

“I hope he died instantly and did not have to endure the pain. But most importantly, I hope he did not have time to think about what happened, because I don’t want him to have thought that I was right. I don’t want him to have spent his last moments feeling guilty,” she said.

“I sometimes think about how he could have died, and how long and painful it could have been... it’s too cruel a fate.”

Another Jean Paul Sofia who also died

Isabelle reveals she lost another son two years before Jean Paul was born. Her first son, whom she had also named Jean Paul Sofia, died five days after birth because he was born prematurely.

“We had already lost a son so you can imagine how happy we were when Jean Paul was born two years later,” she said.

“I really wanted to become a grandmother one day. I love children a lot. But I guess that won’t happen now, because I don’t have any more children. They’re still both in my heart but I can’t hear them call me ‘mum’.”

Picture of five-day-old Jean Paul in his casket stands next to a portrait of his brother, 20-year-old Jean Paul, who died in December. Photo: Karl Andrew Micallef.

Two frames now stand side by side in Isabelle’s kitchen. One is a portrait of 20-year-old Jean Paul and the other is a photo of her other son, five-day-old Jean Paul, lying peacefully in an open casket with two red roses – bigger than him in length – placed by his side.

If I do not fight, I would be doing a disservice to my son and your children- Isabelle Bonnici

“I’m not doing this for myself. I have no children to fight for now. And I’m a very private person and I don’t like the limelight. I would rather stay at home but I am doing this because I need to keep fighting till my last breath,” she said. 

“If I do not fight, I would be doing a disservice to my son and your children.”

Why she did not attend her son's funeral

Isabelle also addressed some online criticism over her absence from Jean Paul’s funeral. She said she has gone to many funerals in her life, but she did not show up to the funerals of both her sons as well as her mother’s.

Sofia's bedroom lies untouched since his mother tidied it, hours before he was killed. Photo: Karl Andrew Micallef

“And I don’t regret it. The funeral is not the last goodbye to my son. I gave him my last goodbye the morning of the day he died, when I gave him my blessing before he left home and when I called him shortly afterward. 

“That’s how I want to remember him and that’s how I wanted to achieve closure.”

A relentless fight for justice

As the magisterial inquiry is nearing conclusion, Isabelle hopes that anyone found responsible for the building collapse is brought to justice. But she continues to insist that investigations must go beyond the incident for the whole truth and justice to prevail.

The magisterial inquiry will look into why the building collapsed, but a public inquiry is needed to look into the processes and political decisions that led the government to grant public land to developers who erected a building that collapsed “like a deck of cards”, she said.

Isabelle went from being a private person to a public advocate. Photo: Karl Andrew Micallef.

“We must know what went wrong from the get-go. How was that land granted to those developers? Was there any due diligence done on them? Did public officials do all that was expected of them to ensure that the developers were competent, responsible and trustworthy enough to be trusted with public land? What funds, if any, were they granted?” she said. 

“The magisterial inquiry will not answer these questions and that is why we need a public inquiry, because if politicians and people in power did not do their job well, then they should be held accountable as well, just like everyone else.”

The country can only truly learn from its mistakes if it knows what mistakes it made from the very beginning, she said.

Isabelle Bonnici can hardly look at her son’s empty bedroom. Photo: Karl Andrew Micallef.

Times of Malta revealed in December how the government land on which the private factory was being built is leased to an alleged human trafficker, Kurt Buhagiar.

His business partner, Matthew Schembri, has faced his own accusations of criminal wrongdoing in connection with two “hitmen” allegedly hired to assault his ex-wife’s father-in-law.

Isabelle suspects unethical political decisions could have possibly led the land to be given to irresponsible developers, and that is why she wants politicians to be investigated as well.

But the government has so far refused to order a public inquiry and despite showing up outside parliament and facing the prime minister herself, Isabelle has not yet won that battle for a public inquiry.

“All I want, really, is for the prime minister and the ministers who are against the public inquiry to look me in the eye and tell me – who are they protecting exactly? The weak or the powerful and wealthy?”

Isabelle understands she went from being a very private person to becoming a public figure taking on some of the country’s most powerful people, but she is determined to fight on and does not exclude taking people to court herself.

“I have nothing to lose. That’s what a mother’s love does to you. It gives you the courage of a lion and this will not stop here. I will fight it till my last breath so that no mother has to go through what I’m going through and so none of your children will ever have to die on their workplace again.

“Even if we change the law and save just one worker’s life, I would at least be able to say that my son did not die in vain.”