Eyewitness tells Czech court the stabbing death of a young Romani man last June was preceded by banal behavior

The first eyewitness to testify said the situation escalated from behavior that was banal. Roman Rohozin, originally from Ukraine, has been charged with murder.

Rohozin denies his guilt and told the court he acted in self-defense. The man who died as a result of injuries sustained in the altercation was Romani, and the case sparked tensions between some in the Romani and Ukrainian communities last June.

The defendant injured two other people as well. The 37-year-old foreign national faces up to 18 years in prison if convicted.

The trial is continuing with the reading of documentary evidence. The first eyewitness who testified had been traveling on the tram at the same time as a small group of people who were being noisy on their way to the fireworks show at the reservoir, listening to loud music.

“It was a small group of about eight to 10 people around 20 years old. There were not just Roma in the group,” the eyewitness described.

The eyewitness testified that his back had been turned while the incident transpired and said he had not actually seen anybody smoking on the tram, as was later claimed. “It began to escalate when we got off,” he testified.

An altercation ensued between the small group and the defendant and punches were thrown, according to the eyewitness. Just after that the scuffle flared up again when the young man who later died jumped over the barrier at the tram stop and set off after Rohozin.

“The entire conflict started up again, shoving and punching started, I’m not able to describe everything that happened,” the eyewitness stated, adding that the whole thing was over in seconds. He did see that the defendant had a knife in his belt.

The eyewitness did not see the knife attack. “I personally did not see him stabbing because it was just a couple of seconds,” he told the court.

“The defendant was surrounded by his own little group who were doing their best to get him out of there, but there were also people from the small Romani group who were pulling the other participants away. In my opinion, though, the small Romani group wanted to escalate the conflict,” the first eyewitness added, saying a smaller number of people were the ones who wanted to fight while the rest were pulling them away.

According to the first eyewitness’s testimony, it seemed to him that the defendant was not the one who wanted to begin the conflict. “It seemed to me that he wanted to walk away,” the first eyewitness said, who also testified that the escalation was over banal matters.

On the other hand, however, when answering the prosecutor’s questions, the first eyewitness said the defendant got up on his own during the scuffle and definitely went on the offensive.

Eyewitness number two: This was not a brutal street fight, but the kind of nudges people give each other in the pub

The second eyewitness opened his testimony by saying he had received threats from people on social media after the incident. The reason, allegedly, was a comment he posted to Facebook beneath another post about the murder.

“They were looking for me because I wrote a commentary on Facebook about what I saw. They wrote me messages that sounded like threats. It was Romani people in particular who did this, I could tell by the photographs on their profiles,” he told the court, adding that he is not afraid to testify.

According to the second eyewitness, the group on the tram was being noisy and the defendant shouted at them. “I was sitting three seats behind the defendant. In the beginning everything was in order, then the young people started playing music, which was fine. Then they began smoking and other people started leaving that part of the tram, and the defendant started shouting something at them,” the second eyewitness testified.

After disembarking from the tram, an altercation ensued. “When they got off, I saw the small group of younger people holding back the one who has since died to calm things down,” the second eyewitness described in more detail, adding that the small groups moved up the street when things escalated.

“The defendant who was mentioned was there, the deceased with two other guys, and another two who were most likely friends of the defendant,” said the second eyewitness, adding that they all ended up on the ground: “The small group of the younger guys pushed the defendant to the ground. They were all lying on the ground, even the Ukrainians.”

The second eyewitness saw how the defendant was holding a knife and stabbed somebody in the belly as he was standing up. “The defendant was holding a knife in his hand and stabbed the boy in the belly. The deceased was standing over him and the defendant was not lying flat on his back, but he was sort of bent over,” he clarified.

The first conflict which flared up immediately after everybody exited the tram was not so serious as to have to end in death, according to the second eyewitness. He said what was exchanged were just nudges, he did not see any blows or slaps.

“That was not a brutal brawl. It was the kind of nudges people give each other in the pub, insults, trash talk,” he said in response to the prosecutor’s questions.

The attorney for the defendant greatly disliked the second eyewitness’s testimony. “In this testimony there are many contradictions compared to the testimony given during the preliminary hearing,” the defense attorney said and began to read what he characterized as the different passages.

Judge Dita Řepková rejected some of the defense attorney’s comments and had the second eyewitness explain some of the others.

Eyewitness number three: The beginning of the conflict was mutual, both groups were shouting at each other

A third eyewitness testified that after disembarking from the tram, both of the small groups shouted at each other and the conflict erupted. “I was not on board, but I saw what happened when they all exited,” he testified.

“I was up top at the place where they rotate the trolleybuses,” the third eyewitness explained. “I saw the group pushing each other, and then I saw the boy who fell down on the lawn, on the cliff, and then he took off his t-shirt and I saw the wound. A few minutes later I noticed another guy injured,” the third eyewitness testified.

“I can say that at the start it was mutual. Both groups shouted at each other until they started running at each other. The group further from the tram stop was five or more people, the one closer was mixed up among the other people, but I noticed two. The group up top was larger, and that was the group where the injured one was,” said the third eyewitness, adding that he just saw the young man who was injured lying on his back on the ground and did not see anybody jump over the barrier.

A Ukrainian woman also testified who is a friend of Rohozin and had been traveling with him on the tram. She said he had reprimanded the small group on the tram without any aggression.

“They weren’t behaving well, the girls were smoking cigarettes, the guys were shouting. Roman got up, without any aggression, and reprimanded them,” the defendant’s friend testified.

The group then started beating the defendant up at the tram stop and she did her best to push them away. According to her, they were assaulting Rohozin only.

They attacked him again a bit further on, according to this fourth eyewitness, beating Rohozin while he was lying on the ground. Her testimony mentioned a total of three conflicts, however, and at one point she also said she never saw Rohozin on the ground.

The Ukrainian woman also said the beginning of the conflict involved three Romani men and three Ukrainian ones. “My husband was there, Roman and a friend,” she described.

The judge noted for the record that this fourth eyewitness’s testimony in court was quite brief compared to her testimony during the preliminary hearing, which filled four A4-sized pieces of paper. The judge then read her previous testimony into the record.

The court also read several other testimonies into the record, such as the testimony of a fifth eyewitness who had excused herself from attending the trial. The testimonies were chiefly from members of either group and were not disinterested testimonies.

The testimonies from the circle of people on Rohozin’s side claimed he had not elicited the attack, while the testimonies from the other side claimed the defendant was the one “who wanted to solve it”.

Expert witness: The young Romani man’s injuries were severe, there was only a theoretical chance he could have been saved

Jan Krajsa, an expert witness in the field of forensics, testified to the Regional Court in Brno that the deceased’s injuries were severe and that there was only a theoretical chance he could have been saved. The immediate cause of his death was, according to Krajsa, the stab wound to his belly that led to the laceration of the large veins in the abdomen and internal bleeding.

“Death was directly caused by the abdominal injury,” the expert witness said. He added that there were other minor injuries around the main wound which had not been fatal.

According to the expert witness, the wound was about 12 centimeters deep, stabbing through the belly, reaching the intestines and above all the inferior vena cava and iliac artery. “The injuries were severe and there was only a theoretical chance he could have been saved,” the expert witness testified.

In such a case it takes minutes, perhaps tens of minutes, for a person to bleed out, and it is fatal, according to the expert witness. The defendant had previously described the deceased as in a position standing over him when he stabbed him.

The expert witness said that description was possible. “That part of the abdomen is an accessible area, I can imagine that,” he testified.

The intensity of the stabbing, according to the expert witness, must have been high because the knife penetrated both the clothing and the body. No defensive marks were found on the body of the deceased, there were no cuts on the hands indicating that he had defended himself against the attack.

Psychiatrist for the defendant: This was not intentional, he did not mean to harm anybody. He carried the knife to eat a snack.

An expert witness in psychiatry, Marta Holanová, testified that the defendant’s reactions had been neither pathological nor surprising. They also were not intentional, she said.

The defendant felt he was in danger, he had the feeling that he was powerless and that his life was at risk, so he used his knife, the psychiatrist testified. She had not found Rohozin to suffer from any pathology, describing his personality as normally structured and unremarkable.

Holanová testified that Rohozin does have a grounding in values, that he had been raised a Christian, and that he follows such values and upholds them. In her view, he behaves responsibly.

The psychiatrist testified that she had not found Rohozin to have a higher level of aggressivity or impulsivity. “I have no choice but to reflect on how I would behave if I were assaulted and had the opportunity to defend myself. There are exceptional situations when anybody would manage to do something he normally wouldn’t,” she said.

In such a situation, according to the psychiatrist, one has the tendency to either defend oneself or to escape. “If a person feels his life is at risk, he uses whatever he has that will give him the greatest chance of surviving. That was this case,” she testified.

The psychiatrist said that from her perspective, what happened was a brief moment of instinctive reaction. She believes it was not intentional, that Rohozin had not wanted to harm anybody on purpose.

“When he felt threatened, he had the feeling he was powerless, that his life was at stake, so he used his knife,” Holanová said. She also answered a question from the attorney for the injured parties as to how she assesses the fact that the defendant was carrying a knife in the first place.

“He said he was carrying a snack with him and the knife was part of the equipment he had for eating it,” the psychiatrist said, adding that the defendant is sad about the whole situation. “He considers it to be a great misfortune,” she said, rejecting the idea that the defendant feels self-pity.

Psychologist for the defense: Rohozin is not prejudiced against any ethnic group

Psychologist Marcela Langová – Šindelářová testified that the defendant’s intellect is significantly above average and reminded the court that he has a college education. In her view, he is a mature personality and she did not find anything pathological about him.

Rohozin does not have an increased level of aggressivity, according to the psychologist. “He has been living in a residential hotel and he described the conditions there as also resulting in noisy behavior. He asks his fellow tenants to keep it down there and they do so. On the tram he did his best to calm the group down and presumed he would achieve his aim. He could not have predicted that such a conflict would ensue,” the psychologist testified.

The defendant felt he was in danger, he felt powerless, and in such a situation one either counter-attacks or escapes, the psychologist testified. “Escape was not possible, so he absolutely automatically went to the other extreme, defending himself physically. If a person has something available, within reach, he will use it,” she said.

“What is crucial is his feeling of surprise, he never anticipated anything like this. The powerlessness when there were so many assailants against him is also crucial. He ended up in an unenviable situation,” the psychologist testified.

The judge asked the psychologist whether she had ascertained that the defendant has a negative relationship toward ethnic groups or whether he is a nationalist or a xenophobe “I did not find anything of the kind. He has a good relationship toward people in general. I did not find any bias toward any groups,” the psychologist replied.

The eyewitnesses testified in the morning and the expert witnesses in the afternoon. On Friday the trial will continue with the reading of documentary evidence into the record.

The presiding judge has set the date for closing arguments and the verdict as 1 March.

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The trial opened in mid-December last year, when testimony was heard from Rohozin and the two other surviving people whom he injured during the scuffle. The defendant testified at that time that he had acted in self-defense.

The group of three people, according to Rohozin, assaulted him after he got off of the tram he had been taking to see the fireworks show at the reservoir. They had been making noise on the tram and he had asked them to stop.

Rohozin said he had pulled the knife in self-defense and never even knew he had stabbed anybody. According to the surviving injured parties, the defendant had started shouting at them and making threats, and after they exited the tram they assaulted him and punched him in response.

According to the indictment, the accused used his knife to assault and injure three people near the tram stop who all required hospitalization thereafter. One later died in the hospital.

The deceased was a young Romani man. Soon after his death, hatred of Ukrainians began to spread in part of the Romani community and the incident of 10 June also sparked unrest in Brno.