He told me: ‘I will kill you’. Pastizzeria throat-slash victim testifies

A court has heard a man testify about how his throat was slashed while he was serving a customer in his pastizzeria last month.

Pastizzeria owner Nicholas Bezzina told magistrate Rachel Montebello how, at around 10:30am on 12 August, he had been inside his shop when his friend, the accused, 44-year-old Gordon Calleja came into the shop.

“He was carrying a bottle of wine and told me to open it for him as he didn’t have a corkscrew. He asked for a Coke and I gave it to him. He asked for some tortellini and I fed him,” said Bezzina.

“But when I turned around to face the oven, he came from behind me and told me ‘I will kill you.’ I felt the blade against my throat.”

Bezzina was then stabbed three times in the neck, he said, showing the magistrate a prominent scar, stretching from under his ear to the middle of his throat.

“I was telling him that I have two children and asking him why he had done this to me,” Bezzina said. “I grabbed his arm and held the knife away from me; he was saying he wanted to stab me in the stomach.”

“I told him ‘don’t you know how much I love you?’ and he said ‘if you love me, give me your money.’” 

Bezzina escaped to a nearby police station after telling Calleja that he needed to get the money from his car, locking the police station door behind him as he went in. “I locked the door but he was banging on it saying he wanted to stab me again.”

Answering a question from the court, he said the shop had been empty at the time of the attack. There were officers in the police station, he said, “but they were young.”

The victim said he knew Calleja as a regular customer. “There were never any problems. I never charged him for food. I considered him a friend. When I told my son, he didn’t believe me because he knew Gordon too.”

Bezzina spent a week in hospital after his life was saved by surgeons at Mater Dei Hospital, in a three-hour operation, he said.

“The surgeon told me God must love you, because you should be dead, you lost so much blood,” Bezzina said

Calleja was later found to have taken some €360 from the till, alleged the victim.

Prosecuting police inspector Kurt Zahra cross-examined the witness. He said that Bezzina had claimed to have occasionally taken the accused out to eat and had cooked for him on other occasions.  “On some occasions, he would ask me if I was poisoning him,” said the victim.

‘Find me at home’

One of the police officers who had first arrived on the scene said that as soon as he went inside the shop, Calleja had immediately got into his car, started it and told the startled officer that if he wanted him, he’d be at home, before driving off. “I didn’t even have time to taser him,” said the policeman.

At the time he was arrested, according to the officer, the accused was found to be carrying some unspecified medication. He told the police “I did that to him”.

The compilation of evidence continues next month.

Lawyer Noel Bartolo was defence counsel.

Lawyer Franco Debono and Marion Camilleri were parte civile.