Friends arraigned over unsuccesful burglary

Two young men from Hamrun have today admitted to charges in connection with a thwarted burglary from a Santa Venera shop last month.

In separate arraignments, police inspectors Eliott Magro and Roderick Zammit presented Qormi neighbours Keithien Borg, 19, and Janovich Gatt, 18, under arrest, charging them with attempted theft from the shop and causing damage to the shop.

Gatt alone was also charged with an attempted theft from a pastizzeria in Hamrun, in which damage was caused, while Borg was accused of committing a crime during the operative time of a conditional discharge and a separate probation order.

Both men pleaded guilty.

Magistrate Doreen Clarke sentenced Borg to nine months imprisonment but chose not to convert Borg’s probation order into an effective jail term, in spite of him being a recidivist, warning him “this is the nth time you have been convicted, you now have three sentences hanging over you. Use your nine months in prison well because if you leave jail and commit another offence, you will be going back there for a much longer time.”

The court also ordered the Director of Prisons to place the accused on a drugs rehabilitation programme.

Likewise Gatt, who was already under a probation order, was handed a nine-month sentence suspended for 18 months.

The magistrate, noting that Gatt had no previous jail sentences, told the youth in no uncertain terms that if he was convicted again, he would be going to prison. “You and your friend ruined each other. Learn from your friend’s experience,” she exhorted.

Lawyer Leontine Calleja acted as legal aid to the youths.