Assault victim tells trial he can't remember his friend being beaten to death
Eoin Reynolds
A Croatian man who was assaulted while his childhood friend was beaten to death beside him has told a murder trial that he suffered memory loss and can say nothing about what happened.
David Druzinec (29) on Wednesday told the trial of three men accused of murdering Josip Strok (31), that he remembers having a "strange feeling" that they were being followed after he and the deceased got off a bus near his home in Clondalkin, Dublin.
As they walked towards Mr Druzinec's home in the Grange View estate, Mr Druzinec said he told Mr Strok to "hurry up" when he saw people behind them.
He said he didn't recognise any of them and couldn't say what age they were, but he knew they were male and there were "more than three of them". He said he "got attacked" and suffered a loss of memory.
He said he can say "nothing about what happened," but recalls seeing an ambulance and his friend lying on the ground. Mr Druzinec required stitches above both eyes and to the top of his hea,d and had bruises on his cheeks.
Mark Lee (44), of no fixed abode, and Anthony Delappe (19) of Melrose Avenue, Clondalkin have both pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the manslaughter of Josip Strok at Grangeview Way in Clondalkin on April 3, 2024.
Connor Rafferty (21) of Castlegrange Close, Clondalkin has pleaded not guilty to Mr Strok's murder. All three have pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to Mr Druzinec, at the same location. It is alleged that the three accused assaulted Mr Druzinec and Mr Strok on March 30, 2024 and that Mr Strok died four days later from blunt force injuries sustained in the attack.
It is the prosecution case that the three men assaulted the two Croatians after being told that they had attacked a 17-year-old boy at a nearby bus stop. Seoirse Ó Dúnlaing SC, for the prosecution, said in his opening speech earlier this week that the accused knew Mr Strok and Mr Druzinec were foreign nationals and that has "relevance in the case".
Mr Druzinec told Mr Ó Dúnlaing that he moved to Ireland in 2018 and in March 2024 was working in Inchicore in Dublin fitting signs for shops. He was living in Clondalkin for just two days when, on the Saturday of the Easter Bank Holiday weekend he met up with Mr Strok in Dublin City Centre.
He described Mr Strok as a childhood friend and said they had been neighbours growing up in Croatia. They had planned to go home for the Bank Holiday but were unable to get flights. That evening, they had beers in Busker's and the Oliver St John Gogarty bars in Temple Bar before getting a bus to Clondalkin at about 8pm.
They went to Tesco for groceries and waited for another bus to take them home. He said he couldn't remember an 'incident' at that bus stop, but recalled getting on the bus and getting off near Grange View before being attacked.
On CCTV footage, Mr Druzinec identified himself wearing a 'wicker hat' that he had been given earlier that night at the Oliver St John Gogarty pub.
Earlier today, a teenage girl told Mr Ó Dúnlaing that she was with her partner at the bus stop outside the Tesco in Clondalkin when she saw two men, one of them wearing a straw hat. They were drinking from brown bottles and smoking, she said. One of them asked her partner for a lighter, but he told them he doesn't smoke.
They kept asking for a light and "wouldn't leave him alone", she said. They became aggressive, and the man wearing the hat jumped over a wall to get at her partner. They started fighting, and the second man "jumped in and put [her partner] out onto the road" while kicking and punching him, the witness said.
Her partner screamed at them to stop, telling them that he's "only a child". When he said he was only 17, the man who was not wearing a hat pulled the other man away, she said. As the witness and her partner walked towards a nearby garda station to report what had happened, she recalled the man in the hat screaming: "I'm going to kill you."
Under cross-examination, the witness told Michael Bowman SC, for Mr Lee, that the man with the straw hat was the "more aggressive" of the two. She said they both dragged her partner to the ground, punched and kicked him and left him with scratches to his arms and legs. His side was red where they had dragged him along the ground, she said.
She agreed that it was "pretty frightening".
Sgt Anthony Flynn told Mr Ó Dúnlaing that on the same night he and two other gardaí were on patrol in Temple Bar as part of operations intended to restore public confidence in policing following the Dublin riots.
At 7.15pm they arrived at Busker's Bar, where doormen were restraining a man on the ground. The doormen explained that the man had been removed and restrained because he struck someone in the bar. The man identified himself as David Druzinec and gave his address.
Sgt Flynn warned Mr Druzinec to leave the area or he would be arrested.
Kinga Szczepaniak told Mr Ó Dúnlaing that shortly after 10pm that night she was alerted to something going on in the street outside her home in Grange View. She looked out her window and saw a man sitting by the side of the road who seemed drunk and unable to stand up. Another man was lying "straight down" on the street.
She rang emergency services and told them she didn't know if the man lying down was alive, but she could tell there was "really something wrong with him".
The trial continues before Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring and a jury of six men and six women.
