WATCH: ‘Cheryl, I Can’t Breathe, I Won’t Be Here For Much Longer’: Hugo Chetcuti’s Family Speak On His Painful Murder
The close family of Hugo Chetcuti, the Maltese entrepreneur that was stabbed in Paceville in July, have opened up about losing their loved one during an emotional segment on TVM’s Xarabank Friday night.
Hugo’s mother and father, son, siblings and close friends spoke at length about the man that reshaped Malta’s entertainment industry and lent his name to some of the most popular clubs and brands in Paceville.
Isaac, Hugo’s brother, recounted the last time he spoke to his brother before he died, when Hugo talked about the man who is suspected of murdering him.
“The last time I saw him,” says Isaac, “he told me: ‘I have no idea why he did this to me, I don’t even know him… but if he tells my why he did this, I will forgive him’… my brother was ready to forgive the man who sent him to the bed that he eventually died in.”
Holding back tears, Luke Chetcuti, his son, recounted the last time he spoke to his father
“I told him ‘Dad, they are going to do an operation on you now’, and he just told me ‘I am dying.’ I tried to be strong for him… I kissed him, and then I walked away, but turned back and told him ‘I love you dad’ and he said ‘I love you, take care of everyone for me,” and those were his last words,” said Luke.
Hugo’s father, Frans, said that burying his son was hard on him. Struggling to speak, he said that whenever they open the cemetery where his son is buried, he goes to visit and leave a candle. “While I am there, I just cry alone,” he said. “It’s not nice to have to bury your own child.”
His mother, Wilhelma, couldn’t hold back the tears: “I just hope for all the people in the world that they don’t ever go through what I went through with my son.”
“Hugo, I still love you with all my heart,” she said, looking at a picture of her dead son.
His family spoke about the ‘real’ Hugo, the one that they knew and loved
“He would cry over everything, that’s how soft his heart was,” said Luke, while his sister Cheryl recounted times when Hugo would defend people he barely knew: “he would never see anything bad in anyone”.
“Hugo wasn’t strict, he always forgave – he believed in chances, and not just a second or third chance,” said Caroline, a general manager that worked in Hugo’s establishments. “If he saw something good in you, he’d just keep giving you another chance.”