A POLISH man who died in May 2009 had sustained three stab wounds to his liver, Assistant State Pathologist Dr Margot Bolster told the Circuit Criminal Court in Tralee yesterday.
The evidence was heard on the second day of the trial of Michal Kurowski (29), also a Polish national, who is charged with the murder of Michal Skotak (32) at Racecourse Lawn, Tralee, on May 16th, 2009. Dr Bolster carried out a postmortem on the dead man at Kerry General Hospital.
Mr Skotak had died of haemorrhage and shock due to multiple stab wounds, she said. The wounds to the thorax, chest and abdomen were consistent with a knife with a 10.7cm blade shown to her by gardaí, she said. The dead man’s blood had an alcohol reading consistent with six or seven shorts or pints, she found.
Mr Kurowski, of Old Gallows Field, Tralee, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr Skotak near the dead man’s house.
The late Mr Skotak came to work in Tralee in 2005. His wife and their two children followed in 2007. In 2008 he adopted the two children of his sister, who had died tragically, and was living with them at Racecourse Lawn. There had been a celebration for the First Communion of one of his adopted children on the day in question. Mr Skotak had worked at Dairymaster in Causeway but had lost his job that March. In April, six weeks before the incident, the dead man’s wife, Anna Skotak, had begun living with Mr Kurowski with the Skotaks’ two children in Old Gallows Field. They had met in 2008.
Earlier yesterday the dead man’s cousin, Darius Skotak, also living in Tralee, said he had not been drinking at the after-lunch Holy Communion party. He had been alerted to a fight between his cousin and the accused on the street outside at Racecourse Lawn after Anna Skotak called to collect her children. He told the court he ran out to separate the men.
“I started to shout, ‘Why are you fighting at First Communion? What are you doing? You cannot do that.’ I tried to drag Michal Skotak from Mr Kurowski,” Darius Skotak told prosecutor Tom Rice, speaking through a translator. When he separated them there was blood on his cousin’s shirt. He said Anna Skotak was present but was “not screaming for help or anything”.
Under cross-examination by defence counsel Seán Gillane, he claimed he said to the accused: “Is it not enough you take his wife from him, you also want to take his life away?” He did not wait for an ambulance, but drove his bleeding cousin to Kerry General Hospital.
Mr Kurowski’s former girlfriend of nine years, Monika Ramenda, said she had found out about the relationship between the accused and Anna Skotak in January of last year. He had bought a Blackhawk knife on eBay, she said. This was in February of 2009 as their relationship was ending.
Garda Tim O’Keeffe gave evidence of being called to a stabbing at 6.35pm on May 16th. He saw Mr Kurowski with a lot of blood on his clothes, and he had a knife. “As I approached him, he said: ‘I stabbed him in self-defence’,” Garda O’Keeffe said. The trial, before a jury of eight men and four women and Mr Justice Paul Carney, continues.