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, told the trial of three men accused of murdering 31-year-old Josip Strok 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 did not recognise any of them and could not 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 head and had bruises on his cheeks.
Mark Lee, aged 44, of no fixed abode, and Anthony Delappe, aged 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 3 April 2024.
Connor Rafferty, aged 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 30 March 2024 and that Mr Strok died four days later from blunt force injuries sustained in the attack.
'Relevance in the case'
It is the prosecutions 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 bar 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 could not 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, a teenage girl told Mr Ó Dúnlaing that she was with her partner at the bus stop outside the Tesco store 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 did not smoke.
They 'wouldn't leave him alone'
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 was "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 spoke to a Belgian tourist in the bar who said he had been struck. He had a red mark on his cheek but he did not want to pursue the matter and was returning to Belgium the following day.
Sgt Flynn warned Mr Druzinec to leave the area or he would be arrested. After a number of warnings, he did leave. Sgt Flynn described Mr Druzinec as intoxicated but compliant and not aggressive towards gardaí or door staff.
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.
He was in a "very strange position", she said, with his face down and his arms and legs contorted. Ms Szczepaniak's husband wanted to go out, but she would not let him because she did not know what was happening. She rang emergency services and told them she did not know if the man lying down was alive, but she could tell there was "really something wrong with him".
After some time, the witness went out with her husband to the man on the ground. He "looked strange", she said, and may have had a broken jaw and nose. A neighbour named Jessica Bowes came to help and, following the instructions of the emergency services phone operator, they turned the man over.
Ms Szczepaniak found a pulse but it was weak and Ms Bowes did CPR until a fire crew arrived and told them to go back inside.
Under cross-examination, Ms Szczepaniak told Mr Bowman that Grange View is a "quiet residential area" and she was shocked by what she saw. She said she initially refused to let her husband go out because she was afraid that he might get injured.
Ms Bowes told Mr Ó Dúnlaing that when she left her home, she saw a man sitting on the grass verge "covered in blood" while the man lying on the road appeared seriously injured with blood all over his head.
When she and Ms Szczepaniak turned him over, Ms Bowes noted clotted blood in both nostrils. She tilted his head back and checked his airways but did not think he was breathing. She said she has basic CPR training so she began doing chest compressions until emergency services arrived.
Another neighbour, Graham Kinsella, told Mr Bowman he was on his way to the off-licence when he came across a man sitting on the kerb and another lying on the road. He described the area as a quiet place where everyone gets on. He agreed that it is like the "United Nations" with people from Ireland, Poland, Russia, Albania and elsewhere.
Mr Kinsella said he was "very apprehensive" and concerned for his own safety so he went home and took a knife from a drawer in his kitchen. He said he thought someone may have been stabbed and did not know who was the aggressor.
The trial continues before Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring and a jury of six men and six women.
