The men are said to have beaten the work colleague, dragged him into a car and taken him to the Wilhelminenberg, where the 36-year-old was further beaten and kicked and seriously injured. The accused were sentenced to long prison terms at the Vienna Regional Court on Wednesday. They served 18 and 16 years respectively for attempted murder. The judgments are already final.
Victim was left almost naked in four degrees
The accused – two native Romanians aged 22 and 45 – had simply left their victim lying in a wooded area on the night of March 17, 2022 with a skull fracture and a cerebral hemorrhage. Previously, they had stripped the seriously injured man down to his underpants at an outside temperature of four degrees. “He was bleeding, he was helpless, he was alone. And it was cold,” said the prosecutor. By simply leaving the maltreated man, who was also from Romania, to his fate and moving away from the scene of the crime, they would have accepted his death with approval.
Victim found by accident
The seriously injured man was found eight hours later by a dog owner who was taking his four-legged friend for a morning walk. The dog owner called the rescue and the police. At this point, the 36-year-old was only “conditionally responsive”, as forensic pathologist Christian Reiter explained. If he had been lying in the forest without help for much longer, “that could undoubtedly have led to the man’s death,” reported the expert.
In addition to the most severe head injuries, Reiter also reported a comminuted fracture of the jaw and a dislocation of the eye socket – presumably from being kicked. The man’s head was said to have been violently kicked three times.
In principle, the accused confessed to the course of events. “I’m sorry about what happened. I want to apologize a hundred times,” the older of the two stated. He is guilty. “I admit that I took the actions, but he kept making eyes at my wife,” said the younger defendant. The 36-year-old had “always caused problems. He kept hitting on my wife.”
The three men had worked as floor layers for the same company. Initially, the 36-year-old lived with the 22-year-old’s family, but then had to move out. “I assumed that they might have sex,” the 22-year-old told the court, fearing that his wife might be unfaithful. The 36-year-old then stayed with the second accused, and his wife is said to have made advances.
On March 16, the three men met after work at a gas station, where they consumed alcohol together. It came to the first fisticuffs, which were documented by a surveillance camera. On the one hand, the 36-year-old is said to have insulted the two accused, on the other hand, his behavior towards the wives played an important role in the quarrel.
After the first hits and headbutts, the 36-year-old was dragged by his work colleagues into the company car parked in front of the gas station. They went to a remote parking lot on the outskirts of town and, according to the indictment, the man was dragged 250 meters into a forest, where the heavily intoxicated man, with limited ability to defend himself, was maltreated. “He was kicked until he was still,” the prosecutor said.
The younger defendant told the court that they wanted to “teach a lesson” and scare him. The clothes were taken away from him “so that he wouldn’t come home”. The 36-year-old was “alive when we left”.
The 36-year-old testified that he had no memory of the night. He woke up in the hospital: “I couldn’t see anything in one eye, my teeth had broken out.” He was in the hospital for seven weeks. It is “not true” that he approached the wives of his former work colleagues.
The 22-year-old’s defense attorney, Manfred Arbacher-Stöger, had pleaded attempted manslaughter. His client was extremely angry and upset because the 36-year-old “constantly hit on his wife”. He had acted in a generally understandable, violent emotion. However, the jury unanimously concurred with the indictment and found both defendants guilty of attempted murder. The 22-year-old was also responsible for an attempted, deliberately serious physical injury – he had already punched the 36-year-old in the face at the beginning of March. As a result, he received a higher sentence than the second accused.
Source: Nachrichten
