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A CAGE FIGHTER and another man have been found guilty of murdering a 23-year-old by beating him unconscious and leaving him to drown in the River Shannon.
Polish-born Patryk Krupa drowned in the Shannon outside Athlone while incapacitated with a head injury from a violent assault on June 20th, 2014.
Leszek Sychulec (34), a Polish cage fighter with an address at Drinan, Ballymahon, Co Longford, and Andrzej Gruchacz (35) with an address in Warsaw, Poland had pleaded not guilty to murdering Krupa at Bogganfin, Athlone, Co Roscommon.
Headbutted by men
The Central Criminal Court trial heard that Krupa had been walking to the gym with his two friends when a black BMW stopped beside them and two men got out.
One of these men headbutted one of Krupa’s friends and told them to ‘fuck off’. They moved away as instructed and Krupa disappeared down an alley with the men from the BMW.
The trial heard that the friends were concerned as they knew that Krupa owed some money to a man. They contacted Krupa’s pregnant girlfriend and the three of them searched Athlone for the friend and partner they knew as Paddy.
Found in the River Shannon
They were passing the spot on the Shannon where he used to fish and decided to stop there to look. They found the deceased floating face down in the Shannon. They tried to revive him but he couldn’t be saved and was pronounced dead at the scene.
The jury heard from a witness called Kuba Zmuda, who said that he had been instructed by the two men in the BMW to find Patryk Krupa. He said he was in the front passenger seat when the two men took their victim off Church Street in Athlone.
He said these men beat the victim in the back seat of the car as they were driven by another man to the banks of the Shannon. Zmuda said that Patryk Krupa was crying, “I pay”, as they continued to beat him there, before dragging him to the river.
The court heard that he was unconscious but alive when thrown in the water. Some of his bruising was consistent with his having been stamped on.
Arrests
Zmuda did not report the attack until he was arrested on suspicion of murder, telling the court that the men had threatened him. He knew only Sychulec’s first name, but gave descriptions of the two killers, as did Krupa’s friends.
When Sychulec was arrested the following day, Patryk Krupa’s DNA was found in blood on his watch and sock.
The eyewitness descriptions of the other man involved matched that of Gruchacz.
The jury was also satisfied that he was the man in passport photographs and a fake driving licence found in the car in which Sychulec was arrested. This put him with Sychulec that night.
‘Acting as a team’
The jury was also satisfied that both men could be seen together ‘acting as a team’ in CCTV footage captured in a shop in Athlone that night.
Mr Justice Tony Hunt had told the jury that it could reach alternative verdicts of manslaughter or assault against either accused. This direction came after Sychulec’s lawyer suggested that Krupa might have been alive and sitting on the river bank when his attackers left the scene.
However this would not have explained the photographs the jury saw of drag marks in gravel down the bank to the water’s edge.
The four women and eight men deliberated for five hours before reaching unanimous verdicts on all four counts.
Justice Hunt thanked them for their ‘excellent’ work, adjourned sentencing until 13 June when each man will receive the mandatory life sentence for murder.
Patryk Krupa’s family embraced each other afterwards. It’s expected that his mother will return to court to give her victim impact statement at the sentence hearing.
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What about Irish nurses, doctors and healthcare staff,
@Brian O’Grady: Ah now Brian, let’s not forget the FFG motto “sure wouldn’t they be grateful to be second class citizens in their own country”
People of Ireland should not forget at next elections
@Brian O’Grady: Irish Healthcare staff will keep emigrating as long as wages/conditions remain the same. However the biggest reason they leave home is because Ireland has not been in a position to provide them with a roof over their head and that doesn’t look like changing in the near to distant future. We will continue to try and lure African and Filipino healthcare workers who haven’t got a clue what they’re letting themselves in for as long as the housing crisis remains.
@Leo Martin: Spot on!!!!!!
@Brian O’Grady: We do nit have eniugh oif them at prescent and rely on overseas staff.
@Steve Bell: 100%
A colleague of mine with an honors degree and masters degree with 4 years experience working in a stressful hospital environment is living in a mobile home at the back of her parents house. She and her boyfriend cannot afford a mortgage. The home is cold or very hot depending on external environmen. The stove in it nearly smothered them one night. She goes Into her parents house when it’s really cold. She travels 30 minutes to work every day. Where is her story being highlighted by the MoH? Where are the breaks for young home grown people in this country?
@Ollie O’Cleirigh: and for those who ask why can’t she afford the mortgage it’s because she was paying almost 40% of her wages on rent in Dublin for 4 years. Why the he’ll aren’t we trying to keep young professionals in this country.
Recently graduated Irish nurses on the lowest pay scale and healthcare assistants should get priority if they have to travel long distances to work. We should be aiming to keep our graduates here.
@Áine G: I seem to remember decades ago ( probably shouldn’t admit to being this old) that many Irish teaching hospitals had onsite dorms for trainee nurses, as times changed these were either sold off, demolished, refurbished for office use or just allowed to fall into ruin. So now the plan is to reinvest what will possibly amount to tens, if not hundreds of millions of euros into building dorms for foreign nurses, but our native staff who are struggling to find a vacant property let alone afford the exorbitant rent prices being asked. Obviously a deposit and mortgage would be well beyond the means of a nurses salary.
If this isn’t a State sponsored recipe for creating a two tier system within nursing and deliberately causing financial friction within nursing, well I don’t know what is. It’ll lead to further unrest and demands for further, justified, pay increases.
Years ago, when nursing training was on an apprenticeship type basis, ie, training on the wards, there was always accommodation on site. It used to be called the nurses home… probably all turned into offices now.
I think that’s the problem, too many pen pushers and middle management and not enough attention paid to the people at the coalface. Progress is all very well but we seem to have lost sight of what is really important, good bedside manner, time for patients and good old fashioned cleanliness!
@Mary Walshe: St. Luke’s Old Hospital in Clonmel they closed it down as a mental health hospital it was eventually turned into plus offices instead of accommodation for the medial staff of STGH many of them have to live in Cork or Waterford and commute to work everyday and because public transport is so bad in the area they all have to run car’s. Presently the HSE are turfing our older citizens from their nursing home of St. Patricks Cashel and many of the old buildings are now offices. They were to build a new state of the art facility on the site, but the new excuse is PARKING issues stating there wouldn’t be enough space. Yet the same hospital housed 300 patients at one time and no one had problems with parking and they can’t accommodate a 60 patient unit, this is what’s happing to our people and it not a money issue as the HSE has so much money they probably couldn’t account for 80% of it.
With all due respect to the Migrants and Refugees and their plight, but this Accommodation problem has been faced by Irish Nurses for years and the Government have done nothing about it. This Government appears to trying to do everything they can to inflame Racial Tensions by discriminating against the native Irish.
@Owen G Mc Ginley: Yes, this is one of the ironies of the policy. Same with the proposed ‘hate’ legislation which will serve to enrage the locals at what they see as discrimination against them.
@Owen G Mc Ginley: 100%But the worst thing about it is they know that!
I guess donnely thinks fxck our own…make it so they emergrate just so we can import from other country’s what we’ve already trained up here amongst ourselves….and this man isn’t a traitor to the general good of the irish people?
That’s absolutely appalling, Irish citizens being totally ignored!
This should be done with companies as well. If they’re setting up here offer them a tax discount for the first couple of years if they build apartments for their staff while they’re building a factory.
Seems like every company in the world wants to locate here but if their staff can’t find a place to live they’ll have to look elsewhere. I’d say we’re very close to that point now.
@Benny Mchale: They do that already. It’s a pretty handy number for them as in you work for them, then hand back half your wages to them to rent their overpriced apartments!
We train up our nurses who then go abroad ad to replace them we recruit nurses from abroad. Anybody else feel that this might not be an ideal system?
A higher wage for Dublin based nurses would make sense too
The Twilight Zone has done it again and released Donnely upon us. This is a clear statement from this incompetent minister that Irish nurses, medical staff and the state of the healthcare are certainly not his priority or his problem. An absolute shocker of a minister and the degradation of Ireland and it’s services from all of these ministers is beyond recovery. As a nation we are letting it happen and must band together like we did for the water charges and make this change.
Would it not be cheaper to just pay your own qualified staff and you wouldn’t tobrely so heavily on migrant nurses.
Or maybe if its not cheaper just do it anyway because they are paid Pittens as it is.
Donnelly the chocolate teapot more waffle waffle
One of the main issues besides the housing issue is the fact that newly qualified nurses are not being offered decent contracts with an option to grow further in their career, that is one of the main issues they leave Ireland…and you cannot blame them
Drogheda had a Nurses home it’s now offices. It accommodated both Irish and international nurses. It’s seems strange to train our nurses for emigration while we import others. No sense in that. The accommodation could be charged at a small sum to cover all costs and therefore making it cost effective for all.
Why now ?, Why not eight years ago?. This should have been done for all nurses and doctors. Probably something to say they achieved at election time.
A person who lies over and over again has issues with their mom and dad.
have your say