A man who saw Bernice Cassar being assaulted on a Paola road minutes before she was shot dead has recalled her aggressor flinging her around “like a rag doll”. 

The aggressor, a “well-built man” wearing a green top and black trousers, grabbed his victim “from the hair, neck, underarms and waist” and kicked her to roll her over, the Mcast staff member testified on Monday.

He told the court that he witnessed the November 22 incident through the window of his first-floor office window. 

Cassar, a mother of two, was on her way to work that morning when she was stopped while driving, beaten and then shot dead. 

Her estranged husband Roderick spent several hours holed up in his house in Qrendi after the shooting, before police broke in and arrested him. He is pleading not guilty to murdering her. 

During his stand-off with the police, Cassar published a public Facebook post in which he told his two young children “I love you, I couldn’t live without you. Sorry. Till we meet again.” A former work colleague of his has testified that he immediately called Roderick Cassar after reading that post. Cassar, he said, told him that “I killed her! I killed her!”. 

Bernice Cassar had, just days earlier, reported her estranged husband for having breached a protection order and threatened her. Police had not yet acted on that report when she was killed.

The murder prompted the government to order an inquiry into potential failings leading to her death. The inquiry conclusions are now being studied before being made public.

The minutes leading to the murder

On Monday, a court heard from eyewitnesses who saw Cassar moments before she was killed. 

One of those witnesses, Mcast staff member Jeanette Cachia, told a court how she heard a shot and rushed to her office window. From there, she saw a woman sitting on the ground, her back against the rear wheel of a white SUV, crying and “evidently in trouble”. 

A man was standing above the victim. He then held a weapon in both hands and fired two shots at her in quick succession, Cachia told the court. 

At that point, the woman fell to the ground. 

“She was not moving,” the shaken eyewitness testified. 

Man 'dragged person from car'

Claude Galea, who like Cachia also works at Mcast, witnessed the minutes before those gunshots first-hand. 

He told the court that he initially thought that he was looking at a case of road rage, with a man banging on the window of a white SUV while holding a black object Galea initially thought was a metal bar. 

The incident then took a darker turn, however, when the aggressor opened the SUV door and got inside. When he came out, he was dragging another person dressed in white behind him. 

“He was literally moving her about like a rag doll,” the witness recalled, telling the court that he even saw the man try to kick the victim over. 

Then he grabbed her arms, dragged her into a seated position against the car and slapped her face “as though to revive her, I don’t know.” 

All through, the person in white (the victim) appeared to be unresponsive, Galea told the court, and he thought she had fainted. But whenever a car would drive past, the man in green would step back while the victim would shout “help me! Help!”. 

At that point, Galea said, he dialled 112. 

Meanwhile, he realised that the “black object” he initially thought was a metal bar was in fact a gun. The aggressor pointed it towards the victim, the eyewitness testified.

Galea told the court that at that stage, he decided to get his mobile phone, which was charging in another room. As he was walking back, he heard the sound of gunshots. 

“It was the sound of a tactical weapon, smaller than a hunting rifle,” the eyewitness, who described himself as experienced with firearms, told the court. 

The person in white was lying on the ground. The man in green hopped into the grey car, tossed the “black object” inside and drove off. The entire incident lasted five to seven minutes, Galea testified. 

The witness told the court that he then called 112 again to report the shooting and getaway. 

Man in boiler suit tried to intervene

Under further questioning, Galea said that there was a football pitch between his office and the road where the incident took place. Apart from some electricity poles, his view was unobstructed. 

Galea also recalled a man in a boiler suit step close to the aggressor at one point, but he backed off after the aggressor gestured for him to move away. 

Defence lawyer Franco Debono asked the witness if the man in green was trying to pull the woman in white into the car. 

“No, it wasn’t the case. Impossible. From what I could see, he was pulling her out,” came the witness’s clear reply.

'He fired, then fired again'

Another eyewitness who saw the man shoot Cassar was Kenneth Mallia, who runs a factory in the Corradino Industrial Estate. 

Mallia told the court he was in his car and driving away from the factory when one of his workers told him that a man was viciously beating a woman just up the road. 

Another man who works nearby also approached them and told them “don’t go near them. He’s going to kill her, for sure,” Mallia recalled.

At that stage, Mallia saw a pair of legs beneath an open car door and a man standing close by.

The man then raised a weapon with his left hand, pulled the trigger with his right and then repeated the action.  

“He raised his gun, fired and lowered it. Then he raised it again, fired and lowered it again,” Mallia said. 

At that point, he put his car into reverse and headed back towards his factory, dialling 112 on the way. 

“As I left, I heard a third shot,” Mallia told the court. 

Witness struggles to remember details

The man who approached Mallia and warned him not to approach was Victor Psaila.

Psaila, however, struggled to recall details of the incident when testifying on Monday, earning himself a number of reprimands from magistrate Joseph Mifsud for appearing to not be telling the whole truth or “being selective”. 

Psaila told the court he could not identify the man he had seen that day pulling a woman out of a car’s driver seat, grabbing her by the shoulder. 

“I asked if he needed help and showed him my mobile. But he just told me to reverse,” said the witness. 

The woman ended up on the ground, Psaila said. Further details seemed to elude the witness, who ascribed his failure to recall the incident with precision to the lack of light. 

"It was 8am, it was still quite dark," Psaila said. 

The case continues.

AG lawyers Angele Vella and Darlene Grima assisted Inspectors Wayne Camilleri, Shaun Pawney and Paul Camlleri.

Lawyers Franco Debono, Arthur Azzopardi and Marion Camilleri were defence counsel.

Lawyers Stefano Filletti, Marita Pace Dimech, Ann Marie Cutajar and Rodianne Sciberras appeared parte civile.