A Polish man who came to Ireland to find a better life instead met a tragic death, his brother said on Tuesday after his killer was found guilty of murder.
Krzystof Grzegorski (22), was found guilty today of murdering fellow Polish man Bogdan Michalkiewicz (41), at the victim’s home in Westside Apartments, Letterkenny, Co Donegal on May 13th 2013.
Grzegorski had pleaded guilty to manslaughter but the prosecution rejected the plea.
The jury came to their unanimous decision after a little over five hours.
Bogdan’s brother Tomasz, who has sat through every day of the three-week trial, wrote a victim impact statement that was read to the court by Garda Siobhan McGowan.
It said: “My only family left is my sister and mother back in Poland. My only family in Ireland was Bogdan, who came here with me in 2005 to look for a better life than we could get in Poland, but instead of that he met a tragic death.”
Trial judge Justice Patrick McCarthy sentenced Grzegorski to the mandatory term of life imprisonment before prison officers led the convicted man from court.
The sentence was backdated to May 26th 2014 when Grzegorski was first taken into custody.
Evidence in trial
In his trial summary prosecuting counsel Alex Owens SC said that the evidence showed that Krzystof Grzegorski went to Bogdan’s flat to retrieve a mobile phone that had been left there some days earlier. An argument broke out but Grzegorski told gardai during interviews in 2014 that he couldn’t remember what sparked the vicious attack.
He said: “I asked him whether he was there and he said he was there. I asked if someone else was with him and he said ‘yes’.”
