Two Ukrainian truck drivers who are said to have seriously injured a third person in a parking lot in Mondsee on Easter Sunday were sentenced to prison terms of twelve months or 30 months in prison on Thursday in the regional court in Wels. The jury saw no attempted murder, as accused by the prosecution, but only grievous or deliberately grievous bodily harm. The judgments are final.
The prosecutor alleged that there had been an argument between the drunk men and that the 22-year-old first defendant had pinned the 38-year-old victim to the ground. The 43-year-old second defendant hit the man who was unknown to them with a hammer, first on his legs, then on the head. The hammer, on which DNA traces of all three were found, was subsequently hidden by one of the two defendants, but the police found it. Hiding the instrument of the crime speaks against a self-defense situation. Striking with a hammer is not the slightest measure, and the 2: 1 situation speaks against it. The 38-year-old ended up in intensive care with a traumatic brain injury and other injuries, the prosecutor said.
The lawyer of the first defendant, Kurt Jelinek, stated that his client was being held by a man he did not know and that his T-shirt was pulled over his head. The second defendant, a friend of his father’s, came to his aid. “He tried to calm down,” said Jelinek. A witness made a video of the crime that did not show everything, but was very informative. The victim later got involved in contradictions. His proceedings ended with a diversion, the unequal treatment could not be seen. His client pleaded guilty of deliberately serious bodily harm, “but not of murder”.
The second defendant’s lawyer, Christoph Mandl, confirmed that his client only wanted to help his friend. Because of the beefy stature of the attacker – the later victim – he did not dare to do it with his bare hands, so he used the hammer to help. First his blows were directed against the legs, then against the body of the 38-year-old. When that did not dissuade the attacker from the first defendant, he hit the head once. “He regrets that too.” Then the victim let go of the first defendant and the second defendant left. The 43-year-old also pleaded not guilty to the attempted murder charge, since, according to his Mandl, “the whole thing was justified as self-defense and emergency aid”;
In both cases, the jury unanimously denied the question of whether it was an attempted murder. The first defendant was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment for aggravated bodily harm, four of which were unconditionally sentenced, and was released due to previous custody. The second defendant missed 30 months for deliberate grievous bodily harm.