CHOGM limo and police escort in hit-and-run this morning

These two cars – one of them a CHOGM limo in which delegates were being chauffeured to a meeting, and the other a plain white police escort vehicle – were involved in a hit-and-run collision in Attard this morning.

The police vehicle hit a car being driven by a woman, whose elderly mother was on the passenger seat, but then drove off after stopping briefly. The limo hit the police vehicle. Her car sustained damage to the rear bumper.

The police officers in the white car did not even emerge from their vehicle or identify themselves as police officers. They attempted no contact with the victim of the collision. She tried to speak to the limo driver – who she described as a “rough man wearing a chunky gold necklace” – but he refused to roll down his window.

When he put it down a fraction, she asked him whether they should call the police or wardens. His response was “X’pulizija, pulizija! Jien ghandi l-VIPs mieghi, ta.” Meanwhile, the delegates on the back seat smiled in confusion.

The man then drove off. He did not inform the woman victim that the car ahead was a police car and that the two people in it were police officers. She only found out when she contacted me there and then to report what happened and to send in the photographs, and I told her that the police were actually right there and that they had caused the accident themselves then fled from the scene, which is in breach of the law.

I explained that she should file a report immediately at the nearest police station or, given that police officers are involved, at the Police HQ in Floriana.

The collision occurred when the woman was driving along the road further down from Mount Carmel Hospital, where it narrows and creates a bottle-neck. She heard cars approaching tight behind her with a wailing siren, hugging her bumper and trying to push her out of the way so as to overtake. There wasn’t enough room for her to move aside, but they tried to get past anyway. The police car hit the back of her car, and the limo hit the back of the police car. The police car kept going, stopped a little further along the road, and the police officers did not emerge. They watched as the woman had her brief exchange with the limo driver, and then both drove off.

When the woman rang me, she was clearly shaken and could barely speak properly. She said that she was very upset first by the panic induced by having two cars trying to force their way past her with a siren on when she had nowhere to move, then by the way they smashed into her and drove off without so much as an apology or an explanation that the police were actually part of the accident.