Meat factory worker jailed for nine years for killing housemate with boning knife

A meat factory worker has been jailed for nine years for using his boning knife to kill his housemate after losing hundreds of euro to him in poker.

The Central Criminal Court judge noted that the defendant had expertise in the use of the “extremely dangerous knife”.

Justice Tara Burns said a "very sad" picture had been painted of both men, and wondered why they would leave their homeland to live here, do the unpleasant work they did and spend their spare time drinking and gambling.

She was speaking on Thursday as she sentenced the 39-year-old, whom a jury cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter with the knife from the factory’s “kill floor”.

Tomasz Paszkiewicz had told gardaí that he didn't have any thoughts in his brain at the time, and the defence argued this showed lack of the intent necessary for murder. He had pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the manslaughter of fellow Polish man Marek Swider (40) outside their home on Dublin Street, Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan on January 1st, 2018. The pig farm worker died of two stab wounds to his upper body.

Justice Burns noted that both men were from the same town in Poland and knew each other since they were young men.

The accused had worked in a meat factory here, where his job was a deboner, which consisted of taking the meat off the animal’s head. He had been issued with a special deboner knife, she said.

“One can assume that this was a very sharp knife and that the accused had an expertise in using it,” Justice Burns said. She recalled that the deceased had won a lot of money from the accused in a poker game that night. “The accused was unhappy with how things had gone. He stood up and picked up the money,” she continued. “The deceased objected.”

Justice Burns recalled that the accused had asked the deceased to go outside and that they had left through the kitchen. “In the course of this, the accused obtained his work knife from the kitchen.”

She noted that he had said in interviews that he didn’t intend to kill him, and that “a power” had moved his hand. “The picture painted for both of these men is very sad,” she said. “One wonders why they would leave their homeland to come here . . . do the unpleasant work they did and then spend their time drinking and gambling.”

A notable aggravating factor was that the killing had involved “an extremely dangerous knife, of which the accused had expert knowledge”.

She agreed with the State that it fell into the serious category of offences of this kind and she found that a headline sentence of 13 years was appropriate. However, she reduced this to nine years in light of his guilty plea, other mitigating factors, and his personal circumstances.

Seán Guerin SC, prosecuting, had last week read out a victim impact statement prepared by Mr Swider's mother, Jozefa Swider, and sister, Urszula Swider. They did not attend the trial or sentence hearing. They wrote that a part of their family was taken away from them on the night their son and brother was killed. They had always wondered why and continued to wonder every time they prayed together.