A LITHUANIAN man shouted at a judge after being sentenced to 20 years in jail followed by deportation for his part in the murder of Dungannon supermarket boss Shaun Fitzpatrick.
After 23-year-old Andruis Dunauskas was sentenced in Belfast Crown Court, along with fellow killer Ramunas Balseris, prison staff had to wrestle him to the ground, when he refused to be handcuffed. They then took the former martial arts student to the cells. Mr Justice Hart said Dunauskas’s “violence in court, requiring him to be physically removed was yet another demonstration of his violent nature”.
The judge had just told him and 26-year-old Balseris that he was recommending their deportation once the authorities considered it safe to free them after they’d served at least 20 years of their life sentences.
The pair, Dunasukas of Lisnahull Road and Balseris of Altmore Drive, Dungannon, were convicted last month of murdering Mr Fitzpatrick, who was beaten so badly that paramedics thought he’d been shot in the head.
They had ambushed the “inoffensive” Spar manager, simply because he made no secret of the fact he was gay. They began with a karate kick to the head, before dragging him up an alleyway, subjecting him to “vicious and prolonged attack”. The post mortem found “52 sites of injury” to his head, neck upper chest and body.
Later the men blamed each other for the brutal murder off the Donaghmore Road, in the early hours of March 23rd 2008.
But the judge said he would not “distinguish between them”, and while Dunauskas may have been the main attacker, the fact Balseris had stood by smoking, was “chilling evidence of his callous disregard for their victim”.
He also told the pair there were no substantial mitigating factors given “the ferocity of the attack and the number of injuries” which established their intention was not just to inflict harm but “to kill”.
The judge said the intense effect on 32-year-old Mr Fitzpatrick’s family was also a “significant aggravating factor”, as was the fact he had been “in a vulnerable position when attacked”.
Balseris claimed that when they saw Mr Fitzpatrick, Dunauskas said he was gay and that he didn’t like gays. He then kicked him.