Updated 7pm, adds afternoon sitting details

A typing error in a scene of crime officer’s report that came to light three years after the report had been filed in the records of a murder compilation caused an unexpected hitch in an ongoing trial by jury.

Etienne Bartolo, 39, of Birkirkara, is currently facing trial over the alleged fatal stabbing of Roderick Grech, in the early morning of March 29, 2017, when the two men had reportedly met inside the victim’s car to settle a drug deal. 

Police Sergeant Antoine Fenech, tasked with gathering and downloading CCTV footage from Triq Tumas Fenech and other nearby areas along the route taken by Grech when driving his Ford to the spot where the stabbing allegedly took place, presented his findings to the jury. 

After explaining how he had retrieved footage from the scene of crime and made adjustments to allow for discrepancies between the real-time and the footage time, the expert noted that there was an error in the indicated times. 

The matter was debated once the jurors had been asked to retire to their chambers, a standard procedure when discussing legal points which could possibly influence their judgment on the facts.

“When did you realise this mistake?” Defence lawyer Edward Gatt, promptly asked. “Why wasn’t it pointed out at the compilation stage? And did you tell anyone?”

The court expert said a colleague who double-checked the report had come across the “typing error… only last week,” adding that he had told the Attorney General lawyers about it, indicating the prosecuting lawyers in court.

“Why did the AG not have the decency to at least inform the court about the mistake in the expert’s report?” retorted Dr Gatt, prompting AG lawyer Kevin Valletta to clarify that, “it had been [his] fault not to tell anyone, but had told the expert that the mistake would emerge during his testimony”.

Madam Justice Consuelo Scerri Herrera ordered the expert to prepare a corrected version of his report and return it to the court later throughout the day’s hearing.

Upon a request by the witness himself, the court instructed an usher to accompany the expert to his office and back, explaining to the jurors that this was to ensure that the witness would not contact anyone about the case until his deposition was complete. 

An eye-witness, the first to call the police on that March night close to 1.10am, testified that she had spotted a man, staggering across Triq Tumas Fenech, clutching his stomach evidently in pain, while crying out, “Help! Help! Gejtu.”

Moira Cortis, a former policewoman, had been alerted to the man’s plight first by a “sudden loud screeching of breaks” followed by “a blaring horn” that brought her rushing to her feet, as the man’s cries reached her living room through the closed windows of her apartment, in the vicinity of the Birkirkara council premises.

She had hesitated when the man went out of sight “for some five or more minutes,” but dialled the police number as the man’s cries continued to “echo” [presumably] from a nearby block. 

Minutes later, he staggered back, collapsing on the pavement just as a passerby stopped to help, the woman said, also recalling a “strange noise” from the direction of the car standing in the middle of the road.

She later realised that had been the sound of the car wipers.

That passerby, Jean Pierre Pace, also testified on Thursday recalling how he had been walking down Triq Tumas Fenech when he came across the bleeding man whom he recognised as Roderick Grech.

“Call an ambulance! Stabbed with a knife! I love my mother and father! I love them! Il-vojt, il-vojt, il-vojt!” the victim had allegedly mumbled, still conscious. 

At the time, those words had made little sense, Pace said today, adding that it was only later that he realised that il-vojt was the accused’s nickname, although Bartolo lived nearby.

As Pace had helped the wounded man into an upright seated position, a driver, Kristo Sanjic, also stopped to help, fetching a bag from his car and pressing it against the victim’s chest to try to stop the blood loss. 

At the time, the victim had his “eyes open” but did not speak until the police and ambulance arrived, Sanjic said, recalling “cuts” on the man’s arm and chest. 

PS Kevin Grima testified that the victim was almost unconscious when he reached the murder scene, eyes closed. “Roderick! Roderick! Who did this to you?” the officer had asked, getting no response. 

An RIU officer, who had accompanied the ambulance to hospital, told the jury that when he got to the crime scene, the victim’s car had been parked in the middle of the road, lights on, wipers working, door open, two mobiles and a pouch on the driver’s seat. 

He did not touch anything before giving his handover to the next officer in charge, he said. 

Later on Thursday, the court conducted an on-site inquiry at the murder scene. 

As the trial resumed after the on-site inquiry, Gaetano Bonnici, the man whose name was allegedly called out by the victim, took the witness stand recalling how that night he had been roused from his sleep by the sound of the doorbell. 

He had met four policemen at his door who asked whether he knew “iċ-Ċina,” the victim’s nickname, telling Bonnici that the young man had been stabbed. 

The officers had followed a trail of blood from the entrance of the block, “some 150 metres” away from the site of the murder, all the way up to the second floor flat where Bonnici, now 62, lived with his father and younger brother. 

“The police had told me not to wash the door because there was blood all over the place,” said Bonnici, occasionally straining to answer questions, prompting the judge to ask whether he had hearing problems.

“Yes I do, for the last seven years or so,” said the witness, sparking a comment from defence counsel Mark Vassallo, who observed that this problem had never before been mentioned by the witness. 

Under cross-examination, a barrage of questions were put as to the relationship between the witness and Grech. 

Although saying that he and Grech used to frequent the village bars and clubs, and occasionally exchanged calls, phone logs in the days preceding the murder showed that Grech had called Bonnici some four times in five days, the last time being on March 27 at 10.15am.

“Did he refer people to you for money-lending purposes?” Dr Vassallo asked. 

“No. I only get by on a pension,” insisted Bonnici. 

“Why do you change mobiles?”

“Because many people call and I find that annoying,” said the witness, adding that, “he had a million friends”.

He used to know Grech’s number by heart, insisting that he saved no named contacts on his phone. 

However, upon an order by the court, the man’s current mobile was checked in court, revealing several contacts saved “by nickname”.

Asked by Dr Vassallo whether Grech had possibly dropped anything into his letter-box on that fateful night, “a sachet of cocaine perhaps,” Bonnici flatly denied, even after being questioned about a wooden fixture with a narrow slit, placed above the mailbox, that had not been there at the time of the incident.

Traces of blood had been discovered on the letter-box at the time, the defence lawyer pointed out, explaining that they had noticed the added fixture during the on-site inquiry.

“That was put there by my brother in law,” came the reply. “Do you expect a stabbed man to come knocking at my door!” 

The trial continues on Friday.

Lawyers Edward Gatt and Mark Vassallo are defence counsel. Lawyers Kevin Valletta and Maria Francesca Spiteri are prosecuting.  Lawyers Franco Debono and Amadeus Cachia are parte civile.