The son of a man who was crushed to death by a truck told a court on Monday that his mother had received a phone call mistakenly telling her that her husband needed to be calmed down after he had injured someone.

Martin Micallef testified that his mother had reached out to him to tell him about his father’s accident, only for him to turn up on site and find that his father had died.

Micallef was testifying before Magistrate Nadine Lia in a case requesting that the victims’ employers are held legally responsible for the incident that led to the man’s death.

Karmnu Micallef, 71, was accompanying truck driver, Davide Manunta, when he stepped out of the vehicle to give the driver directions as he attempted to turn around the truck on a narrow road. The two workers had been transporting rebar to a construction site in the area omn 3 February 2022 when the accident happened in Triq Wied il-Qoton, Birżebbuġa.

Micallef was hit, dragged and run over several times with the truck’s left wheel before the driver realised what had taken place.

Someone from GP Borg Limited had called “my mother by mistake and told her that my father had hurt someone and to go there and calm him down,” he recalled.

He had gone on site with a colleague and, when they arrived, Micallef was informed that his father was dead.

Lawyer Franco Galea told the court that the magisterial inquiry into the accident had classified the case as a traffic accident, but the Micallefs were claiming this was a workplace accident.

The inquiry concluded that Davide Manunta should be charged with involuntary homicide. The compilation of evidence is ongoing against him.