A man has been charged with robbing a woman after allegedly following her into the bathroom of a Paceville nightclub, digging into her handbag and making off with her phone and €70 in cash.

However, he didn’t get far as the club’s security staff were alerted to his movements and apprehended him before he could escape. Besides the stolen items, they also found a flick knife an a pepper spray in his possession.

Magistrate Charmaine Galea heard that the suspect, 28-year-old Romanian national George Bogdan Cristianeu, had filed a police report at the St Julian’s police station himself that night, after he was allegedly beaten up by a gang of Arabs. Indeed, he entered the courtroom today with his arm in a sling.

However, as fate would have it, the woman he had robbed was also present at the police station at the time, to report him for theft.

Besides theft, the suspect was also charged with being in possession of an illegal weapon and of breaching the provisions of an earlier suspended sentence for theft.

His lawyer Arthur Azzopardi Azzopardi said that his client disagreed with the facts as stated and requested the court to gather all available CCTV footage from the site so as to prove how he had gotten attacked.

He requested bail but this was denied, with the magistrate warning that the suspect could abscond and that he had committed his crime while still serving a suspended sentence.

Has something like this ever happened to you at Paceville?

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