The 34-year-old woman who was allegedly stabbed to death by her former partner, had filed a domestic violence report against him in the past, police said on Tuesday.
In a statement reacting to media reports on the gruesome murder case, the police said the victim, Chantelle Chetcuti, had filed one domestic violence report back in February 2013.
The report was concerning Justin Borg who earlier on Tuesday was charged with Ms Chetcuti’s killing.
She was stabbed at least five times in the head and neck outside a club in Żabbar late on Sunday. The two had two young children.
In its statement, the police said that the 2013 report had resulted in court action after the police charged Mr Borg. The case came to a close in June of that same year.
Mr Borg, a fruit and vegetable hawker, became the first person to be charged with murder in 2020.
Police sources said he turned up at the gate of the police headquarters in Floriana in blood-stained clothes and with drugs in his pockets, admitting to having stabbed Ms Chetcuti, 34, in Żabbar, that same evening.
Sources say the couple had been going through a rough patch and their relationship was on the rocks. They lived together in Safi. The sources said Mr Borg, 33, had not taken their break-up lightly and had been pestering his partner over the previous few weeks.
On Sunday night, Mr Borg discovered that she was having a drink in a Żabbar bar with another man and went there to confront her.
According to eyewitnesses who spoke to the police, he stormed into the bar seemingly under the influence of alcohol or drugs, shouting and swearing at the woman.
The argument carried on outside the bar where Mr Borg allegedly hit the woman repeatedly with a kitchen knife and then fled the scene.
When the police arrived in Triq il-Kbira just after 8.15pm, they found her lying motionless in a pool of blood. The knife was still embedded in her neck. She was rushed to hospital and immediately operated on. She also suffered superficial wounds to her abdomen.
Ms Chetcuti died on Monday evening.