A woman who ended up arrested after police caught her sitting on a doorstep next to a van full of stolen tools has been acquitted of the crime. 

Antonella Vella, 36, stood accused of the aggravated theft of the vehicle, which its owner had parked outside his home at Tarxien one evening in June 2018.

The van owner had found the van missing, tools and all, when he emerged at 5:30am the next day. He filed a police report, originally claiming that some €25,000 worth of the tools and equipment had been stolen together with the van. 

Yet a couple of hours later, he spotted the white van, with identical number plates, outside a Żejtun building, where it was being unloaded.

Police officers hurried to the site and found the accused sitting on a doorstep, chatting to her partner while he unloaded the van. She later denied that she had anything to do with the theft. 

She also pleaded not guilty to damaging the van as well as breaching three different bail decrees and relapsing. 

Vella insisted that the Żejtun room had been rented out to her then-partner and that she only went there to take drugs, since she could not do so at her mother’s home. 

On the day of the alleged theft, she had walked from her home at Fgura to her partner’s place, after he had called her, asking her to come over.

However, she denied having a key to the premises and said that she had not helped him unload the tools.

The owner subsequently testified that the value of the tools was €13,300, while the van had cost him €2500.

Fingerprints lifted from different parts of the van did not match those of the accused, just as DNA samples from the steering wheel and gear knob resulted in a negative match. 

The court, presided over by magistrate Audrey Demicoli, observed that the mere fact that the accused had been chatting to her partner at the time, did not make her an accomplice.

Forensic evidence did not link the accused to the theft and CCTV footage did not prove that she had not been at her mother’s home earlier in the day. 

In actual fact, her claim that she went to her boyfriend’s place to take drugs, seemed to be corroborated by the number of syringes visible in photos taken by scene of crime officers, the court said, concluding that the prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt and thus clearing the woman of all charges.

Lawyer David Gatt was defence counsel. 

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.