Three siblings targeted in a knife attack while alone at home two months ago recounted the ordeal when testifying against their mother’s former partner who stands accused of attempted murder. 

The brother and sisters recalled the attack when testifying via video conference during a marathon seven-hour sitting on Friday against 43-year old Nazzareno Dalli who is pleading not guilty to the attempted murder of the girls, now aged 13 and 15, inside their Marsa home. 

The children’s mother had broken off her three-year tumultuous relationship with Dalli after filing two domestic violence reports against him. 

Following the March 9 attack, the man told police that he remembered nothing about the incident, saying he had a “total blackout” after consuming drugs and alcohol the previous night. 

He could not even recall he went to Marsa, nor could he explain how he had got into his ex’s house.

But he insisted that he loved her kids “like his own”.

The children painted quite a different picture when narrating their experience from magistrate Marse-Ann Farrugia's chambers.

‘I opened the door and saw him’

That morning the 14-year-old boy and his sisters had turned down their mother’s offer to go shopping with her, preferring to stay home instead.

Around 11.30am the lights went out, said the boy. He left his room to check whether there was a blackout but just as he opened the door of the kids’ bedroom, he spotted Dalli in the kitchen area at the top of the stairs leading up from the front door. 

“Where’s your mother?” asked the man, approaching the boy, one hand behind his back, the other by his side.

“Downstairs,” replied the boy. 

“Where are your sisters?” “Downstairs,” the boy again replied, sensing danger as he spotted the knife in Dalli’s hand while sidling past the kitchen table. 

“He appeared in his right senses... he spoke normally,” said the witness, insisting that the aggressor must have switched off the electricity mains when he entered their home.

The sequence of events that followed was fast-paced.

Dalli allegedly first approached the 15-year old girl. 

“She got a shock… and disappeared,” recalled her brother. 

The aggressor then turned on the youngest girl, grabbed her hair and stabbed her with a knife. 

“When he was done with her, he ran after me,” said the boy, describing how he shoved a kitchen sofa in an attempt to block Dalli’s path, delaying the chase. 

But the man went after the boy, knife in hand, down the flight of stairs.

The boy managed to slip out into the street, running “some 13 metres” and looking back to see Dalli exit their home, then step back inside and bend down briefly before going out again. 

The boy denied telling the inquiring magistrate shortly after the incident that Dalli “seemed drunk and was not seeing my sisters who were right before him.” 

“Did your mother tell you not to repeat that?” asked lawyer Arthur Azzopardi. 

The boy denied that. 

He also recounted another earlier episode when Dalli had allegedly chased him with a knife for posting a photo of the mother and three children on Facebook. 

The boy denied that Dalli had visited their home on the eve of Valentine’s Day, delivering a gas cylinder and a €50 note to buy foodstuffs.

That day one of the girls had allegedly “hugged” the accused, telling him, “I love you, Zaren.” 

“I now hate him because my sister was innocent,” said the boy, under further cross-examination. 

His 15-year-old sister recalled how that day she was rudely woken up to the sound of her name being called out. 

She rushed out of the room and saw “Ronald” bent over her younger sister in the kitchen near the sink. 

She saw a knife in Dalli’s hand. 

“I panicked… darkness came over me…,” said the girl, as she recounted how she rushed up the stairs leading to the roof, blood dripping all over the place, although she did not even realise she had been stabbed.

“Please God help me not lose consciousness,” she prayed, as she jumped over to a neighbour’s roof for safety, fearing Dalli would follow the blood stains upstairs. 

Police to the rescue

She only came down once police arrived on scene. 

The girl said she was very close to her mum and felt for her, knowing she had not been happy in her relationship with the accused.

When he lived with them in Marsa, Dalli would “hurl glasses” and behave aggressively.

Her mother was “always crying.”

Once he threatened the kids “one day, you’ll come and find your mother dead.”

“In Zaren we found the father we never had,” read a post uploaded on Facebook by the witness herself on Father’s Day last year.

She had even bought a perfume gift for the accused, pointed out defence lawyer Mario Mifsud, claiming the siblings were wrongly blaming the accused for wrongdoing committed by their mother’s previous partners. 

On the morning of the attack, their mother had come across a Facebook photo of Dalli with a knife tucked into his waist.

“This must be some sign. I’m sensing something bad,” the mother had told her children.

But her 15-year old daughter had shrugged it off, telling the mother not to overthink. 

The youngest victim had been leaning in bed, her mobile in hand while her sister slept next to her, when the accused suddenly pushed open the door asking “where’s mummy?”

Shocked by the sight of the knife, she rushed out as she saw Dalli hit her sister.

She bumped into something and he caught up with her, grabbing her hair. 

After that, she recalled nothing. 

“It was all hazy.” 

The next thing she recalled was waking up at the ITU in hospital and asking staff “where did all these come from?” with reference to her injuries. 

Asked about her current condition, the girl broke down in tears.

“My body has been spoilt… there are interior injuries too.” 

She too recalled her mother’s tumultuous relationship with the accused who once threatened to “burn them, house and all.” 

The case continues.

AG lawyers Etienne Savona and Manuel Grech prosecuted together with Inspectors Wayne Camilleri and Ian Vella. 

Lawyers Arthur Azzopardi, Franco Debono, Mario Mifsud, Jacob Magri and Nicholas Mifsud are defence counsel.