"Thug who attacked dying Pole was on bail" (75 previous convictions)

Since previous convictions were for car theft etc... never a conviction or charge of assault of any sort? I would assume they brought the screw driver for one of them things?

Again caseyann,I`m not so certain we should be so quick to accept a "sure it was only thieving he had priors for" arguement.

The evidence given here would appear to indicate that the transgressions were at extreme end of the "Only Car Thieving" scale ?

Detective Garda William Ryan told the Central Criminal Court that Keogh had 75 previous convictions.

He said that on May 26th last year he was sentenced to five years in prison for two counts of endangerment. He also received a five-year sentence for criminal damage, three years for the unauthorised taking of a vehicle and six months for driving without insurance, with his driving without a licence taken into consideration.

He was banned from driving for seven years for dangerous driving on the same occasion. All sentences were concurrent, with the last two years suspended.

D Gda Ryan explained that Keogh got bail on these charges on August 30th, 2007 so was out on bail when he kicked a dying Pawel Kalite in the head.

It is also,I think,worthwhile to re-post the Victim Impact Statement read out by Mr Kalite`s and Mr Szwajkos`s employer.

Victim impact statements were read out in court by Alan Kennedy of Ace Autobody, where the two men had worked.

Mr Kalite’s parents said their son was lively and cheerful, with a “happy, true nature”.

He was honest and diligent and led a simple and peaceful life. He was determined to do his best, and to see the best in the world, they said.

“He didn’t know how to fight or how much cruelty and anger you have to have in yourself to take someone else’s life away,” they said.

He had spent his last holiday with his girlfriend skiing and they had planned to marry. He was to move home in June and two hours before his death had arranged to visit his aunt.

“All his dreams will remain unrealised, they will never have a chance to happen,” his parents said. The tragedy had left them with “the deepest scars” and with “a screwdriver” in their hearts.

What was keeping them alive was knowing his heart was still beating in somebody else, they said. The family of Mr Szwaijkos said nothing could change their pain, sadness and longing after the death.

Mr Szwaijkos was full of life, dreams, happiness and plans, they said, and was a “lovely and talented person”.

They described him as an honest, hard-working, unaggressive young man with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering who was doing his job with a true passion.

Every day for the two years he spent in Ireland he had called his parents. But all his plans and hopes had been destroyed in minutes.” We know that no matter what we do there always will be one person missing, a person that we would like to share our feelings and experiences with,” they said.

The family had gone through hell since his death, they said, and were still experiencing “many sleepless nights, enormous level of stress, headaches and an inability to feel any kind of joy”.

They said they would keep the 30-year-old Volkswagen Beetle Mr Szwaijkos restored.

When a stranger blew out the candle of life, “he killed a good man and he destroyed the lives of his parents, sister and family”, they said.

Outside the Central Criminal Court, Mr Kennedy, accompanied by Agnieszka Kalite, Mr Kalite’s sister, thanked the court and the jury for their verdict on behalf of the family.

He also thanked the people of Drimnagh who had supported them since the deaths as well as gardaí for “two years of hard work”.

“It is something to get a verdict, but for Marius’s family and Pawel’s family all they are left with are memories and heartache,” he said.

As Ms Kalite cried beside him, Mr Kennedy described the “two lovely guys” who had come to work for him.

“We’d invested in their training and they gave it back to us in spades,” he said.

He spoke emotionally of the suffering experienced by both men’s families since their deaths.

“Every day two dads go to a graveyard to keep two graves, they are beautiful graves, but what a sentence to have to go to your son’s grave,” he said.

“What a waste of life.”

I've lived next to people who would, to one degree or another, be the same scale of loutishness as this crowd - hanging around small shopping centers we have in all our communities, giving non provoked abuse and taking to mischief, thuggery, theft and so on.

Their mindset is very plain, very simple, and very backwards to our civilized norms. The average man or woman in the street does not want to provoke a reaction, keeps their head down and keeps on walking.

God love you if, as I have, you lived next to any of them. It only gets worse. You cannot sit in your own back garden for fear of trouble.

I, like most of you I am sure, am a tax paying citizen. I, like most of us and these two Polish men, go to work every day, pay our taxes and do our due. We do not deserve to be held to ransom by those who take and never give, no matter their background or societal problems.

I agree with the policy of trying to make these into better people, through education and opportunity. But it is down to them to accept those. If they do not, they can go and spend their entire lives off the streets as far as I am concerned, because I am sick of having to walk teenage daughters to a shop for genuine fear of her safety.

I am sick of losing people from work because they were standing at a bus stop to go into town for a nice evening of socialising when they are set upon by thugs with metal bars... Why? For being a man with long hair.

We can try and better these people, but we must punish them severely when they do not conform to the laws of our civilized society.

But also added if those guys had not left the house and the system was working none of it would have happened.

I`m not afraid to admit that these killings have really shaken me.

The actual mechanics of plunging a screwdriver through a human skull, withdrawing it,moving your eyes to find another target then plunging it through that persons temple whilst around you the other members of your pack whoop with exhileration is the stuff of pure unrestrained evil.

Not to put too fine a point on it I can only think of the term "Work of the Devil" to describe the actions of these young men because,unlike caseyann,I cannot suspend my own faculties by the amount required to apportion ANY blame to those slaughtered men.

What is deeply troubling and saddening to me is that caseyann comes across as normal individual possessed of all the senses necessary to form an opinion and to seek a balanced view of the entire situation.

And yet in that attitude I see the seed of what allowed this gang of partially socialized feral youths to rise to be the dominant force in "their" area.

How many times before had the wee girl called upon this erstwhile young man to come to her assistance and beat the living daylights out of some other hapless individual whose crime may only have been to "look" different ?

How often,in the past,had residents of these streets,pulled their curtains,turned up the volume on the telly in order to drown out the screams of another victim ?

Tonight,how many of this particular youthful crew can be found loitering around the same locations or lying in a stupfied daze beside one of the canal locks as they scan the area for somebody to challenge and attack ?

How many parents,as Nijmigen does,will go to meet and escort their child from the Bus/Luas/Train simply because they FEAR for that childs safety ?

Yes caseyann,we are all doing as you recommend,lying low,keeping quiet,averting our gaze and by doing so we hand over another little piece of our freedom to a section of society which has absolutely no right to it,and who you can rest assured will constantly return until you have no more to give them....at this point you really are on-your-own.

Sadly,caseyann`s Ireland is already a well established fact.

All those gated-communities did not spring up simply to keep the wrought-iron industry in work,they are an attempt to form a secure perimiter to keep their owners safe from the fate which befell Pawel Kalite and Marius Szwajkos.

At some point however the responses recommended by caseyann,will fail to satisfy our savage brethern and they will demand their entitlement in fleash and blood,and when caseyann,that mob is baying at your door for your blood or that of a family member what exactly will you do ?,who will you turn to for assistance?

This thread has been a really challenging and emotionally draining journey for me.

I cannot pull one positive aspect out of the entire thing.

I cannot think of any more to say that can express the extent of sheer revulsion I personally feel about the perpretrators,their followers and those who shared their common-purpose that awful night.

But one message needs to be very forcefully sent out from this forum,if needs be it should be moderated upon,as to be ambiguous about it merely places us all in that awful "Common Purpose".

That message is that Pawel Kalite and Marius Szwajkos were totally innocent men who were slaughtered by our own kind.

There can be no equivication whatever about this,just as the Jury found there to be No mitigating factors when returning their verdict of Guilty of Murder.....

The Murdered Men Cannot Defend their good character so we all must attempt to defend it on their behalf.

THEY WERE NOT TO BLAME.

R.I.P

AlekSmart wrote: »

I`m not afraid to admit that these killings have really shaken me.

The actual mechanics of plunging a screwdriver through a human skull, withdrawing it,moving your eyes to find another target then plunging it through that persons temple whilst around you the other members of your pack whoop with exhileration is the stuff of pure unrestrained evil.

Not to put too fine a point on it I can only think of the term "Work of the Devil" to describe the actions of these young men because,unlike caseyann,I cannot suspend my own faculties by the amount required to apportion ANY blame to those slaughtered men.

What is deeply troubling and saddening to me is that caseyann comes across as normal individual possessed of all the senses necessary to form an opinion and to seek a balanced view of the entire situation.

And yet in that attitude I see the seed of what allowed this gang of partially socialized feral youths to rise to be the dominant force in "their" area.

How many times before had the wee girl called upon this erstwhile young man to come to her assistance and beat the living daylights out of some other hapless individual whose crime may only have been to "look" different ?

How often,in the past,had residents of these streets,pulled their curtains,turned up the volume on the telly in order to drown out the screams of another victim ?

Tonight,how many of this particular youthful crew can be found loitering around the same locations or lying in a stupfied daze beside one of the canal locks as they scan the area for somebody to challenge and attack ?

How many parents,as Nijmigen does,will go to meet and escort their child from the Bus/Luas/Train simply because they FEAR for that childs safety ?

Yes caseyann,we are all doing as you recommend,lying low,keeping quiet,averting our gaze and by doing so we hand over another little piece of our freedom to a section of society which has absolutely no right to it,and who you can rest assured will constantly return until you have no more to give them....at this point you really are on-your-own.

Sadly,caseyann`s Ireland is already a well established fact.

All those gated-communities did not spring up simply to keep the wrought-iron industry in work,they are an attempt to form a secure perimiter to keep their owners safe from the fate which befell Pawel Kalite and Marius Szwajkos.

At some point however the responses recommended by caseyann,will fail to satisfy our savage brethern and they will demand their entitlement in fleash and blood,and when caseyann,that mob is baying at your door for your blood or that of a family member what exactly will you do ?,who will you turn to for assistance?

This thread has been a really challenging and emotionally draining journey for me.

I cannot pull one positive aspect out of the entire thing.

I cannot think of any more to say that can express the extent of sheer revulsion I personally feel about the perpretrators,their followers and those who shared their common-purpose that awful night.

But one message needs to be very forcefully sent out from this forum,if needs be it should be moderated upon,as to be ambiguous about it merely places us all in that awful "Common Purpose".

That message is that Pawel Kalite and Marius Szwajkos were totally innocent men who were slaughtered by our own kind.

There can be no equivication whatever about this,just as the Jury found there to be No mitigating factors when returning their verdict of Guilty of Murder.....

The Murdered Men Cannot Defend their good character so we all must attempt to defend it on their behalf.

THEY WERE NOT TO BLAME.

R.I.P

A quite excellent post!

Recently a drug dealer was busted in a pub I know. Alledgedly caught dealing on the premises, police were called and he was busted. Week later, the place is firebombed.

Polish folk on my road had their windows smashed in for telling a gang of yobs to keep the noise down. They'll soon learn to turn the tellies up and buy earplugs:(:mad:
Anyone who 'Dares' keep their wheelie bins at the front of their house have them go walkies to be burnt by yobs. Of course, 'Why do they keep their bins out front, the stupid eejits' is something that I've heard said.
Nephews friend (17 yo) had his front teeth knocked out with a bottle by folk who were 'known to police'.

Walking to work, I see drugs being openly sold at Tara Street station in Dublin (a regular sight). Same day I see 2 Gardaí hassling a busker on Grafton st.

We have the case in England of a boy being tried for murder, after two yobs broke into his mums house and one came at him with a knife. He ends up getting knife and stabbing yob in the neck.

How the justice system deals with crime and criminals HAS to change. I for one am sick to death of these emasculated times!