A LATVIAN fisherman who killed a fellow countryman in a fight and threw his body over the side of a fishing trawler into Howth Harbour has walked free from the Central Criminal Court after being sentenced to time already served.
Mr Justice Paul Carney said that the public interest would not be served by further imprisoning Sergejs Lavrinovics (36) who choked Igors Bondarenko (35) to death.
Mr Justice Carney said the dead man had criminal convictions of a “highly unsavoury character” and was an extortionist, according to gardaí.
Lavrinovics threw his victim’s body overboard with the help of two co-accused, Andrijans Ubelis (32) and Freddy Grenzman (36). Grenzman was also sentenced to time already served on remand. Ubelis, who had not spent any time in custody, was given a 12- months suspended sentence.
Mr Justice Carney said the two accomplices had as much reason as Lavrinovics to be terrified by the deceased and had assisted in a “highly-charged moment”. He said Lavrinovics had “made sure life was extinct” before the men threw the body overboard.
He said the three defendants co-operated fully with gardaí, made themselves available to prosecution and pleaded guilty to the offences.
Lavrinovics pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of the dead man. The two co-accused admitted aiding and abetting him on the Miraculous trawler at Howth Harbour between September 18th and October 4th, 2006. The three men had been living on the trawler at the time of the killing.
Mr Justice Carney said Lavrinovics could have escaped any criminal conviction if he had successfully pleaded self-defence.
He said: “it is unpleasant to speak ill of the dead, especially when there is no one to defend his memory and where even his mother refused to engage with the victim impact process, but the deceased man’s character is relevant”.
Det Sgt Gary Kelly last week told Denis Vaughan Buckley SC, prosecuting, that the three men had no previous convictions but said the deceased had spent “most of his adult life in prison in Latvia”.
Mr Bondarenko was jailed in July 1990 for the rape of an underage female and for charges of theft and hooliganism.
He was released in 1994 but returned to prison the next year to serve 11 years for robbery.
The victim then came to Ireland and initially worked on trawlers, but then began to target eastern European men for extortion purposes.
His body was found floating in Howth Harbour in late 2006 with a rope and chain tied to his ankle. He had been choked to death and had high levels of alcohol in his blood.
The dead man had attempted and failed to get money from Lavrinovics and they had fought in the days before he was killed.
Lavrinovics, who admitted his involvement when arrested for questioning, told gardaí that the deceased had been looking for an opportunity to beat him up and arrived at his trawler on the night he died armed with a metal fishing implement.
Lavrinovics got up and scuffled with the deceased, throwing the implement overboard. The victim made threats against Lavrinovics’s family and said he would break his sister’s legs and had had sex with his mother.
Lavrinovics choked Mr Bondarenko as he sat on top of him. He then smoked a cigarette to calm down and checked for a pulse. When he realised the victim was dead he decided to throw his body overboard as he was afraid he would be sent to prison in Latvia.
The two co-accused were downstairs in their bunks during the fight. Ubelis told gardaí that he heard the deceased threaten to kill Lavrinovics. The two men left after the fight but returned to help Lavrinovics when he realised he needed help to throw the body into the water.