‘It felt like I was melting’ - officer who was mowed down in Luqa

“As I was shouting at him, I felt like I was melting. I was thinking ‘Am I going to survive?’ It felt like powerful burning, worse than being set on fire.” This was PC Simon Schembri’s vivid description of the incident in which he was dragged under a car by underage driver Liam Debono.

Schembri lost an arm and nearly lost his life in the incident.

Testifying in the compilation of evidence against 17-year-old Debono yesterday morning, Schembri told Magistrate Joe Mifsud that he had been a police officer for 22 years and in the traffic division for seven. “We are obliged to wear safety boots, jacket, trousers and a good helmet,” he said. He himself had bought the helmet as it was better than standard-issue ones, added the officer. “To be more protected,” he said.

Testifying calmly and without self-pity, Schembri said that on the day of the incident he had been dispatched to Paola to cover the south of Malta. At around 6.45am there was a collision in Palm Street, Paola. He had gone to Luqa to clear traffic from the roundabout.

“I noticed a grey Mercedes. It caught my eye because the glass was tinted… Tinted glass is illegal.”

He knocked on the window, noticing that the car was lefthand drive, and the window was opened. There was a youth at the wheel – the seat fully reclined “la xanxe, like on a sofa” – not wearing a seatbelt. “I said, ‘Not even a seatbelt, my friend?’” the officer recalled. He pulled the car over into a bus lane. “I made a sign for him to get behind my bike. I noticed that he wasn’t going to do it… I signalled again and he obeyed.”

“Had he wanted to, he could have parked comfortably, but he didn’t – he parked pointing outwards,” said Schembri. The car’s engine was still on and it was at around 45 degrees to the pavement.

“I went to ask him for his licence and registration and he said, ‘U ejja, ostja, ħallini.’”

Schembri then returned to his motorbike to radio the man’s particulars.

He was three metres away from the front-left mudguard. “As I was with my hand up, saying ‘What are you doing?’ he drove at me.”

“I was on the bonnet and my instinct was to grab onto something to keep myself from falling underneath the vehicle; a wiper, something. A few seconds later, I slipped and was pulled underneath the car. I was face down, being dragged under the car.”

Debono drove in between carriageways. “I pulled my legs in to stop them hitting the stationary cars on either side… I shouted ‘Stop! What are you doing? What have I done to you? Stop! You’re going to kill me!’ He didn’t stop.”

“As I was shouting at him, I felt like I was melting. I was thinking, ‘Am I going to survive?’ It felt like powerful burning; worse than being set on fire. I was spat out from under the car and ended up face-up on the road.”

“I started fighting for breath. I knew that if I had stopped breathing I’d have had it; I’d have been dead. I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing.

I closed my eyes because I knew I was very badly hurt. Someone touched my right hand and I felt great pain.

I heard the voice of a colleague and I told him to take photos because there needed to be evidence of everything.

“I told him, ‘Matthew, don’t tell Moira,’ my wife, who he knew, because I didn’t want to worry her.”

“Then I heard a lot of panicked voices in the area and on the radio someone said, ‘Send everyone now,’ and I realised that I was very seriously hurt.”

I was spoken to by some nurses, who I felt cutting off my clothes. The doctor gave me an injection to calm me down.

His right arm was amputated below the elbow. “Half my chest is gone, my shoulder is reconstructed, I have injuries to my knee and abdomen. I have 11 broken ribs and a fractured pelvis, a broken collarbone and spinal injuries, too.”

The officer, who still suffers phantom limb pain, has not yet returned to work. He told the court that he didn’t think he would return: “I’m still in a lot of pain… having bad thoughts.”

Lawyer Franco Debono formally told the court that the accused wanted to express his remorse. “I’m very sorry for you,” interrupted the accused before being silenced by the court.

Debono asked Schembri why he hadn’t moved out of the car’s way when it started moving towards him and how an officer of his experience had not contemplated the possibility that the driver would ignore his order to stop.

He asked whether it was possible that the car had just pulled in momentarily as the driver was manoeuvring away from the pavement.

PC Schembri insisted that it had all happened in a fraction of a second and that his bike had been parked behind him, preventing him from moving back. “An approaching car at a distance is one thing, a car so close is another,” he said.