A 29-YEAR-OLD former heroin addict has been sentenced to eight years in jail with three suspended after he pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of a 30-year-old homeless Polish man during a row outside a hostel for homeless people in Cork last year.
Connie Horgan, a native of Midleton but resident at the time at St Vincent’s Hostel, Anglesea Street in Cork admitted fatally injuring Ariel Cegielka during a row on Lower Oliver Plunkett Street in Cork on April 17th last.
Yesterday at Cork Circuit Criminal Court, Det Garda Cormac Crotty told how Horgan was with a group of people who were drinking at the rear of the Simon Hostel when Mr Cegielka passed by and Horgan told him to “f**k off” in Polish, only for Mr Cegielka to approach him.
Mr Cegielka said he was too drunk to fight him there and then, but that he would fight him the next day, but the row continued and Horgan picked up an empty vodka bottle and hit Mr Cegielka over the head, causing him to fall back on the road and suffer a fatal head injury.
Horgan was arrested soon after following a tip-off from a witness.
He initially claimed that Mr Cegielka was the aggressor and came for him as he was helping an older woman into the Simon Hostel and that he picked up the bottle without realising what it was and swung out blindly.
But gardaí had obtained CCTV footage which showed clearly that Mr Cegielka was not the aggressor and had kept his hands by his side at all times. “Mr Cegielka was no threat to him,” said Det Garda Crotty, adding that Horgan later accepted this.
Mr Cegielka’s mother, Anima, wrote from Poland to say that while her son was “not perfect” she loved him deeply and she did not believe anyone deserved to die such a brutal death. She asked that “the highest possible sentence be imposed on her son’s killer”.
Counsel for Horgan, Mel Christle, said his client had come from a troubled home. Both his parents were alcoholics and he had gone to London with his father at the age of 14, where he managed to attend school despite living rough on the streets.
He developed a heroin addiction in London but returned to Cork in 2000 where he continued to live rough. Since his arrest and remand in prison, however, he had a “Pauline conversion” and was now fit and healthy and studying for Fetac Level III examinations.
Mr Christle said his client had expressed remorse for causing Mr Cegielka’s death and wished to apologise to both his family for the grief and loss that he had caused them as well as the upset he had caused to the staff of the Simon Hostel who came upon the tragedy.
Judge Con Murphy said it was a serious offence in which drink was a factor for both parties. However, he noted that Horgan pleaded guilty at the first opportunity and he believed his remorse was genuine, as he sentenced him to eight years in jail with three suspended.
