Jurors in the trial of a Romanian man, charged with causing the death of a Sudanese man three years ago, were this afternoon shown CCTV footage taken by various establishments in Paceville where the incident happened.
Court expert Martin Bajada, who was tasked with gathering the footage, projected it on a screen in court during the trial of Romanian Antonel Dobre, 29, who is pleading not guilty to seriously inuring 26-year-old Osama Al Shazliay Saleh - known to his friends as Sunshine - on March 17, 2012.
The prosecution is claiming that Mr Dobre punched Mr Saleh in the face, causing him to fall, hit his head and suffer a brain haemorrhage that led to his death three days later.
The CCTV footage of Pizza by Luca, shown today, showed that the camera was positioned above the pizza outlet facing down St George's road towards St Rita's steps.
The footage showed a dark-skinned man wearing a dark jacket with a white T-Shirt underneath - Mr Saleh - walk calmly towards a group of people outside the pizza place. The man is seen talking to someone. He then turns towards the bottom of the road where he came from and seems to notice something and walks back down the road at a hurried pace towards people.
As he walks away from the camera's focus area he is seen at the top end of the screen that is out of focus - where he falls 20 seconds after walking away from his friends.
The Hugo's Special camera, located at the top of steps leading into the establishment, showed Mr Saleh fall on the far right corner of the screen. Faces are not visible clearly but a man wearing a T-shirt and a scarf - whose head does not show in the frame - is seen moving his right arm upwards before Mr Saleh falls backwards.
Two minutes later the man in the scarf and another man are seen walk down the road hurriedly.
It will be up to the jurors to interpret the footage in the context of all the evidence they have heard and seen.
"The lawyers will give you their interpretation of that they are seeing. It's your job to sieve through and distinguish between interpretation and proof," Mr Justice Antonio Mizzi told jurors.
Next they started hearing the evidence of Romanian Radu Rica who said that he had spent that evening with Mr Dobre. They went to a club and had a drink. He went to the toilet and, on his way back, he was elbowed in the nose by a dark-skinned man for no reason.
When Mr Rica left the club with Mr Dobre, the man walked towards them -looking angry.
"When we exited the club the dark-skinned person noticed us and came towards us... While he was approaching us he was angry and using bad language... He used words that start with F," he said adding that they did not call him towards them.
"He was not speaking, he was swearing - most probably at me.... From that moment onwards what I remember is that, at some point, the security guards came, and Antonel pushed him and he fell on the floor. In detail I don't really know because a lot of time passed... Antonel, seeing that the person was approaching me and directing bad language at me, he wanted to protect me... he tried to push him away so we can leave," he said.
He will continue giving evidence tomorrow - until which time he will have to remain at the law courts under the supervision of a court marshal. His testimony could not be concluded today since the interpreter from Romanian to English (there is another person interpreting from English to Maltese) had to leave to pick up her children.
MaltaToday
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