PROSECUTING LAWYERS have told the jury in the case of a man on trial for murder that he stabbed the victim seven times with a large kitchen knife because he was kicked out of a Christmas party.
Opening the trial of Lithuanian man Egidijus Kiaulakis at the Central Criminal Court yesterday, Patrick Marrinan SC said Mr Kiaulakis returned to the party in Nenagh, Co Tipperary, with a knife concealed in his belt after being told to leave because he was aggressive and arguing.
He said Mr Kiaulakis left his home after midnight on Christmas night 2008, taking with him a bottle of brandy and looking for people to have drinks with.
He passed the Summerhill apartments where the victim, Gintaras Brazauskas (29), was having a party with his girlfriend, their baby, two other Lithuanian couples and their two young children.
Mr Kiaulakis (31), Coille Bheithe, Nenagh, has denied murdering Mr Brazauskas and has also denied a second count of assault causing harm to Robertas Sujetovas on December 26th, 2008.
Mr Marrinan told the jury that the three men had been drinking vodka throughout the day, but the women had little or nothing to drink.
Mr Kiaulakis was invited in, but the “atmosphere turned bad” and he was asked to leave by Mr Brazauskas’s girlfriend because he was being “loud and aggressive”.
Mr Kiaulakis and the three men went outside to continue drinking, but an argument broke out and one of Mr Brazauskas’s friends hit Mr Kiaulakis over the head with a vodka bottle.
He left and walked to a friend’s house where his cuts were attended to. Unknown to his friend, he took a large knife from a block in the kitchen and went back to the party.
When he returned, “he knocked on the door aggressively”.
“The three men and two of the girls rushed out and were confronted immediately by the accused who used his knife in a very aggressive way,” Mr Marrinan said.
“He set about attacking the deceased with the knife and stabbed him a total of seven times, all of the injuries significant.”
Mr Brazauskas was stabbed in the chin and through the back. The knife penetrated his lung and heart, severing the major artery running down his spine, and he died almost immediately.
Mr Kiaulakis then set about attacking Mr Sujetovas, Mr Marrinan said. He would give evidence that he was trying to escape up the stairwell when he was attacked and stabbed four times.
Mr Kiaulakis then fled the scene and threw the knife away near a church.
He was found the following morning on the outskirts of the town by an off-duty garda, who called an ambulance as Mr Kiaulakis appeared badly injured.
He was kept under neurological observation for a time at a hospital in Limerick, but was discharged later that day and immediately arrested. Mr Marrinan told the jury that Mr Kialaukis admitted to gardaí he killed his fellow Lithuanian, but said he was acting in self-defence because he was attacked by the three men, so he lashed out with the knife.
“If you were to take the view that he wasn’t in fact acting in self-defence, then that is the end of the matter and he is guilty of murder,” Mr Marrinan told the jury.
However if the jurors took the view that he was acting in self-defence “but the force he used was disproportionate and unjustified, but in his view he used no more force than he felt was necessary, in those circumstances he is guilty of manslaughter”.