Anger management, suspended sentence for 2013 assault on warden

The court found the man guilty of assault, violently resisting a person enforcing a law, slightly injuring the warden and offending public morals

FILE PHOTO
FILE PHOTO

An angry motorist who assaulted a local warden after booking him for a parking violation, has been handed a seven-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and ordered to undergo anger management treatment.

39-year-old Jean Pierre Schembri, himself a former local warden, had confronted warden Roderick Pace outside a bank in Labour Avenue, Naxxar in February 2013, as Pace was issuing a parking ticket against Schembri’s vehicle.

Inspector Josric Mifsud had charged the accused with assaulting a warden who was on duty, threatening a public official in the course of his official duties, insulting or threatening him, violently resisting a person enforcing a law, as well as slightly injuring Pace, insulting him, offending public morals and relapsing.

Pace told magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech that Schembri had grabbed him from behind as he was issuing the ticket, punching him repeatedly in the face and calling him arrogant.

The accused, Jean Pierre Schembri, chose to testify, giving the court a rather different version of what happened when he emerged from the bank to find the warden taking a picture of his car.

“I told him sir, don't book me, I'm going to park the van where that car is. He started shouting and blaspheming and I told him, like, I'm using a civil tone with you, I'm not being arrogant. He took off his hat and told me 'if you don't give a...' anyway he embellished it further.

“Then he grabbed me, pushed me by the face onto the van, obviously I used a bit of force and he pushed me against the van by the face.”

Schembri said that the warden had slipped and then grabbed his waist with both hands whilst bent over. He told the court that the warden had then restrained his hands.

But the court noted that even the accused had not claimed that the warden had struck him and pointed out that it made no sense for Pace to push him by the face if not to repel him. “And if Pace was restraining his hands, where did the warden's injuries come from?”

The account given by the victim to the police made more sense, said the court. Pace had told police that he had been put in a headlock and punched repeatedly, whilst the accused cursed his mother and family. Medical records showed that Pace had reported pain in the nasal bone, a swollen upper lip and scratches to his left ear.

The court ruled that the accused's version of events was “entirely unlikely and unconvincing,” contrasting it with the account as consistently given by the victim on more than one occasion. The court flatly said that it did not believe that the incident happened in the manner explained by the accused. “Pace's account is the one which explains how he ended up with his head against the accused's abdomen and suffered those injuries.”

The court found him guilty of assault, violently resisting a person enforcing a law, slightly injuring the warden and offending public morals, handing him a seven month prison sentence which it suspended for two years. He was also placed under a treatment order to address his anger management issues.