Victim recounts how he was shot in the face on New Year’s Eve at his Paola field

A farmer from Paola has described how his neighbour shot him in the face on New Year’s Eve, after accusing his dog of squashing his onion crop.

Anthony Azzopardi testified before Magistrate Monica Vella as the compilation of evidence against 66-year-old Martin Delia began on Tuesday.

“I sleep there, it’s where I live,” he said of the field in question. “It was 6am, when I received a phone call from Martin Delia. He told me that my dog had jumped into his field… his son had told him that it had squashed some of his onions.” 

Delia had told him that he was certain that the dog had entered the field from an opening in the fence near a duck enclosure, to which Azzopardi replied that this was impossible as the dog would have attacked the ducks.

Azzopardi agreed to go see what had happened and repair any gaps in the wooden perimeter fence. Delia had sounded normal in the brief phone call, he said.

“As I was doing this, I heard a shot. I thought ‘ok, I’ll call him and ask him where the dog had come in from’. I picked up the extra wood and then I heard another shot,” Azzopardi testified.

He spotted Delia and his son in their field and asked them this question. Delia had pointed to a corner, he recalled. “I said it couldn’t have gone through there, it was too narrow.”

“As soon as I bent down to take a closer look, I heard a bang and felt an impact right above my eye. I straightened up and he was pointing his shotgun at me. He fired again and hit me full in the face.” Azzopardi said he had been shot in the shoulder and face.

The victim cried out in pain, then shouted to his sister telling her to call the police. 

Azzopardi had been shot above his left eyebrow. Lead shot from the second blast had hit him in the eye, the right side of his nose, his ear and had peppered the right-hand side of his body.

Azzopardi spent the next two days in hospital.

Delia’s son had spoken to his father before the shot was fired, but was nowhere to be seen afterwards, the victim recalled.

“It’s a good thing I hid behind a tree because he would probably have carried on shooting.”

He said that the accused had installed several CCTV cameras around his field and that it was likely that he had seen the dog on one of the camera feeds. 

There had not been hostility before the incident, he said. “I always strove to keep the peace, so I went to see where the dog could have entered the property.”

As a result of being shot, the victim now suffered from continuous problems with his vision, seeing lights and floaters after his discharge from hospital. The accused is also his neighbour, he said. “I am scared. Someone has to be with me all the time. Sometimes it's my partner, sometimes it’s my brother. My brother has almost become my shadow.”

Police Inspector Wayne Camilleri who investigated the case, also testified today, telling the court that nine weapons were registered at the accused’s address - one more than the eight recovered from his house. They were registered to the accused’s son, Michael.

The victim and the accused owned adjacent fields on the outskirts of Paola, which are separated by a rubble wall.

Police had recovered empty shotgun shells from the accused’s field, which had later been handed to forensic experts for testing.

A lot of blood was noted in Anthony Azzopardi’s field, he said.

The inquiring magistrate had ordered gunshot residue testing be carried out on the two suspects.

The victim had indicated that Martin Delia had shot him. During his interrogation, the accused had not replied to most of the questions, but had insisted that all nine firearms were in the safe and that none of them were missing. However, after the interrogation was over, Delia had approached the officers and admitted that there was a missing firearm, offering to show the police where it was.

The police eventually recovered the shotgun that had been unaccounted for, under a pile of clothes inside the premises.

Delia told the police that he had known Azzopardi for 30 years. They were neighbours and had several disputes about land in the past, some of them in court, he said. “Whenever he mentioned Anthony he would do so with an expression of annoyance, it was clear that there was a lot of anger.”

He told the police that he had seen one of Azzopardi’s dogs on CCTV, jumping into his field and damaging his crops and had contacted the victim about it.

The source of Delia’s animosity towards his neighbour appeared to be an inspection on Delia’s land that had discovered two illegal buildings there, which he had to demolish. Delia was convinced that Azzopardi had reported him to the authorities.

On the witness stand, Inspector Camilleri recalled how, upon being informed by the police that Azzopardi was probably going to survive the shooting, the accused had cursed and sworn, expressing his disappointment at that fact.

After his arrest, the accused had been taken to hospital after falling ill. Doctors decided to keep him in hospital under observation. Delia was re-arrested after his discharge from hospital and escorted back to Police HQ for further questioning.

A second statement was taken, but this time Delia opted not to answer any questions. He was arraigned on 2 January at around 8pm, said the inspector.

Accused has health problems

Cross-examining the inspector, one of Delia’s defence lawyers, Matthew Xuereb suggested that his client had to be administered insulin before his second statement, but the witness could not confirm this. Police officers always administer medication in accordance with the doctor’s prescription, he said.

During the taking of his second statement, Delia had told the police that he was “a sick man,” confirmed the inspector, but had not asked for a break at any point. “He was afforded a long time to rest and was always provided with the necessary medication… over three hours had elapsed between his being swabbed for gunshot residue and his statement… We always followed the instructions given to us by the doctors.”

The inspector said that during the interrogation, precisely as Delia had started opening up to the police, another member of his defence team, lawyer Daniel Attard had interrupted him. 

Xuereb suggested that his client also had problems with his eyesight. 

“That’s probably why the victim survived,” quipped lawyer Franco Debono, appearing for the victim as parte civile.

Inspector Camilleri replied that he was aware that the accused was diabetic but suggested that a medical professional would be better placed to answer the question.

Taking over the cross-examination, another member of the defendant’s legal team, lawyer Jose Herrera, asked the inspector whether the police had noticed any shotguns inside the victim’s house. He confirmed that there were, adding that the shotguns had been properly secured and that nothing irregular had been noted.

The court allowed lawyer Franco Debono to re-examine the witness, asking the inspector whether he had confirmed with doctors that the accused had been fit for interrogation. Inspector Camilleri replied that he had. “In fact, the second statement was taken right after he was discharged from Mater Dei,” he said.

Herrera dictated a note on behalf of the defence, saying that it emerged from the inspector’s testimony that the inquiring magistrate had appointed two serving police officers as experts. The defence reserved its position on the validity or otherwise of the appointment in view of reservations about their impartiality and relevant decisions of the Constitutional court.

Bail application

Tempers flared when towards the end of the sitting, Herrera asked about a bail application that he had filed on 4 January. The lawyer explained that he had intended to make arguments about the bail request.

But Herrera and Debono disagreed about whether or not he could legally do so, sparking a lively debate on this point. Debono pointed out that the acts of the case showed that the court had already rejected the bail request, and so another one had to be filed before the court could hear arguments about it.The lawyers continued to shout over each other for several minutes, ignoring or not hearing the magistrate’s orders to pipe down. The sitting was then suspended for several minutes, the magistrate leaving the courtroom.

Lawyer Matthew Xuereb, yet another member of Delia’s legal team, jabbed his finger at the prosecutors, shouting “shame on you! You should be ashamed of yourself!” before stalking out of the courtroom.

At a point, the only defence lawyer left in the courtroom was Jacob Magri.

The magistrate returned to the courtroom some minutes later, warning the lawyers that if they started shouting again she would send them all out of the courtroom. 

She pointed out that she always issued a decree on bail applications within 48 hours.

Herrera explained that the defence had filed an application, asking for the case to be heard urgently and requesting bail after the accused’s doctor testified. He had not been informed that the application had been rejected in a decree handed down in chambers.

The defence had not been notified nor had it occurred to them that its application would be denied, he said. The court told the lawyer that such applications should not be filed two weeks before a sitting. “I don’t leave bail applications sitting in the case file for 10 days.”

Another bail application was subsequently filed during the sitting.

Herrera pointed out that the doctor in question had been waiting outside the courtroom for the past two and a half hours. “Here we have a case of a person meriting bail on the grounds of serious health conditions,” he said.

The court took cognisance of the application and ordered the AG to reply within 24 hours.

Medical doctor Chris Cremona, stationed at Corradino Correctional Facility, took the witness stand last today. He had examined the accused, who also gave the witness his consent to testify about his medical history, he said.

“Martin Delia suffers from end stage kidney disease and needs dialysis,” said the doctor, adding that the accused also suffers from atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure and ischemic heart disease and had been operated on several times.

The most serious issue was dialysis which Delia needed to do every two days. The accused is also diabetic and takes insulin twice a day and is on medication for water on the lungs, blood pressure and a host of other serious medical ailments, he said.

“At the moment, his medical needs are being addressed, but it is obviously a strain on the service. We have eight full-time nurses but have 570 other inmates who also require attention,” he said.

Herrera questioned the point of denying bail to a man who would be spending most of the day in hospital anyway. “He is seriously ill. It is an exceptional consideration that the court must make. We know how worried his family are that something will happen to him in prison. He is so unwell that he does not belong in prison. Some compassion must be shown.”

Prosecutor Kaylie Bonett from the Office of the Attorney General replied that she would make her submissions in writing, but told the court that the accused “is clearly receiving treatment in prison.”

The court adjourned the compilation of evidence to later this month, announcing that it would issue a decree on bail from chambers, after receiving the AG’s written submissions.