A 45-year-old man was given a suspended sentence after the courts found him guilty of attempted theft of a number of items at the Lost and Found room at Malta International Airport.
The accused, Marco Camilleri, had been employed with MIA for 25 years as a carpenter and maintenance worker. The incident took place on 3 July 2015 at around 2.30 pm, when two MIA customer care workers, Eleanor Curmi and Noel Gaffiero, went to the Lost and Found room
In her testimony, Ms Curmi said that when she and Mr Gaffiero placed the key in the lock to open the door, they found that an object had been placed on the other side to block entry.
She explained that eventually she managed to push the door open just enough for her to slip through. Inside, she saw that a box had been placed to block the door from opening, with a number of items such as mobile phones sprawled on the ground.
Ms Curmi then said she saw the accused climbing up shelves to pass through a gap in a part of the soffit that was removed. She reported what she had seen to her superiors immediately.
A search of employee lockers, inclusive of the accused's locker, came up empty. After being interrogated by the police, Mr Camilleri said that he was in the room to retrieve a screw-driver that went missing two-three weeks prior. He said that it went missing while he was working on a soffit on the second floor, very close to the room in question.
The accused said that he realised the tool had gone missing when he was organising his belongings, which is why he had brought a ladder in the corridor where the Lost and Found room is located. He explained that he entered the room through the soffit in order to locate the tool, and that was why Ms Curmi saw him climbing the shelves from inside the room, so that he could exit the same way he entered.
When asked to explain why he had propped a box up against the inside of the door, Mr Camilleri said that it simply fell onto the door when he climbed in the room.
This version of events was repeated in open court, however Mr Camilleri failed to explain why he chose to enter the room from the soffit weeks after a screw-driver went missing rather than asking security personnel to open the door using their set of keys.
The courts considered that Mr Camilleri was found climbing out of the room when he heard the two customer care workers entering, that the box propped up against the door was obviously placed to block entry from the outside and that objects of a certain value were sprawled on the ground – indicating that they were brought out of their containers to be taken away.
It also transpired that tasks assigned to the accused are logged, therefore it was not true that weeks before he was assigned work in the vicinity of the Lost and Found room.
The court noted that standard procedure to access the room in question is to ask customer care workers or security personnel.
In view of the accused's clean criminal record, and this being a first offence, Magistrate Audrey Demicoli, presiding over the case, found him guilty of attempted theft, sentencing him to 15-months imprisonment, suspended to three years.
Inspector Silvio Magro prosecuted.
from The Malta Independent http://ift.tt/2fvyn2S
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