Mother of man accused of Chantelle Chetcuti murder refuses to testify

34-year-old Chantelle Chetcuti was murdered outside the Zabbar St. Patrick’s football club in February

Chantelle Chetcuti
Chantelle Chetcuti

The mother of a man accused of murdering his partner seven months ago has declined to testify in the compilation of evidence against him.

This emerged in a sitting this morning in the compilation of evidence against 33-year-old Justin Borg from Safi. Borg is accused of the murder of 34-year-old Chantelle Chetcuti outside the Zabbar St. Patrick’s football club. He is also accused of cocaine possession amongst other charges.

Rita Borg told magistrate Rachel Montebello that she only knew that her son and Chetcuti had been in a relationship for 16 years and that in 2019 had some problems. She said that she didn’t know what the problems were but that she did know that their relationship was not entirely over as Chetcuti would return to Justin from time to time.

At this point the mother of the accused asked the court to allow her to not continue answering the prosecution’s questions. This request was upheld and the woman was exempted from testifying further.

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The owner of a clinic where the couple would go for family therapy told the court that according to his records, they had gone to therapy on a handful of occasions between October 2019 and January 2020, but that he had never seen them personally.

A police witness from Zabbar police station informed the court that he had been unable to bring the last prosecution witness, Dylan Meilak, as he was told that Meilak had gone to live in Gozo when he had gone to escort him to court this morning.

Defence lawyer Franco Debono was astonished by this, telling the court that normally such witnesses would be sought out the night before their court date.

For this reason, the defence suspended its request for bail until after Meilak testifies in the next sitting.

Lawyers Franco Debono, Marion Camilleri and Francesca Zarb were defence counsel.

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