A Polish court found guilty of seven people involved in the murder of Ukrainian Dmytro Nikyforenko in a Wroclaw sober house in July 2021. At the same time, two more people were acquitted.
This was reported by the Polish publication RAR.
The convicts — four former law enforcement officers, a doctor and two employees of the Wrocław Center for Helping People in a State of Alcoholic Intoxication — received prison terms of 1.5 to 5 years for manslaughter.
Dmytro Nikyforenko, originally from the Vinnytsia region, worked in construction in Poland. On July 30, 2021, he and his colleagues were returning from a barbecue where everyone had been drinking. Dmytro was returning home by bus. When the bus arrived at the terminal, and the driver could not wake up the passenger, an ambulance was called to Dmytro, and later the police, who took him to a sober house.
The video, previously published by the Polish publication Onet, shows that law enforcement officers used physical coercion against Nikiforenko. The convicts claim that the Ukrainian allegedly behaved aggressively — he attacked law enforcement officers, disobeyed orders and bit one of his fingers. For this, Nikiforenko was beaten, strangled, and a baton and gas were used against him. When they tried to fasten Dmytro with the so-called bed belts, the man had a sudden cardiac arrest and, despite attempts to save him, he died.
According to the prosecutorʼs office, the convicts exceeded their authority by applying direct coercion measures. According to the investigators, they acted together and by agreement.
"They used physical violence. In particular, they pressed the head, upper body and legs of the victim to the mattress, pressed Nikiforenko to the bed with his knee and his whole body, sat on him, hit him with his hand, fist and baton in the lower back and head or shoulder girdle, clamped his neck with his hands," the indictment reads. conclusion of the Szczecin prosecutorʼs office. This, according to the prosecution, led to Nikiforenkoʼs death due to strangulation.
According to the published records, force began to be applied to Dmitry at 10:41 p.m., and at 11:06 p.m. the medics had already started resuscitation, which did not yield results. The manʼs death became known only at the beginning of September 2021 after publications in the Polish media.