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Czech Republic: Juvenile gets 4.5 years for assaulting man helping accident victim

05 February 2015
4 minute read

Michal Mucha, who together with his brother Jan assaulted a man coming to the aid of the victim of a traffic accident before attacking yet another person at the scene will go to prison for 4.5 years. His sentence for bodily harm and rioting was reduced by the Prague High Court yesterday by six months.  

The appeals court stated that it had never encountered such peculiar circumstances in a case before. The convicted perpetrator was under the mistaken impression that the man he assaulted was the one who had run into his young cousin while he was riding a bicycle.

"This case is extraordinary, we have never seen one like it. Instead of the defendant being glad that people were at the scene of the accident who were taking care of his injured relative, he responded completely unpredictably by attacking the person who was doing his best to help, even though he was repeatedly informed as to how the accident had occurred," presiding Judge Jiří Lněnička said.

The accident and the subsequent attacks happened on the evening of 7 September 2013 near Chomutice (Jičín district), when the driver of a car evidently brushed Mucha’s cousin as he was cycling with the side view mirror of the vehicle. "The question is what the minor was doing at night on a bicycle in the road by himself without a protective helmet," the judge said.  

Lněnička also questioned the behavior of another relative of the accident victim at the scene who reportedly did not remain there but instead continued into the village to raise the alarm with the two brothers, who then came to the scene and committed the assaults. Other relatives of the boy also ran to the scene, as a did another man riding past on his bicycle who wanted to help.  

Instead of receiving thanks, the adult cyclist was attacked by Jan and Michal Mucha. They kicked and punched him in the head and upper half of his body.

The assailants broke the man’s jaw and nose and he later had to undergo an operation and treatment lasting seven weeks. "They attacked him treacherously, he was outnumbered," the judge found.

Michal Mucha, acting alone, then physically assaulted another, older man who came to the aid of adult cyclist and did his best to push the attackers back. Michal Mucha pushed the older man into a ditch and also aimed blows at his head.

While the older man was not caused any serious injury, according to the police files that was just a fortunate coincidence. The brothers confessed to the physical assaults but minimized their behavior, saying they had only struck a few blows and never kicked anyone.

Their other relatives, who saw the entire attack unfold, refused to testify. Other witnesses who testified at the first-instance trial in Hradec Králové said the brothers later attacked the man whom they believed to have harmed their cousin verbally as well.  

"You white pig, we’ll find you, we’ll kill you, we’ll beat you to death, we know where you live, we’ll kill your whole family," the brothers are alleged to have shouted. However, a racial motivation for the crime was not considered proved by the court.

"Why whould I shout abuse at them when we’re from the same village?" Michal Mucha said previously. Today he did not want to comment on his behavior.

The court in Hradec Králové originally sentenced Michal Mucha on two counts of attempted grievous bodily harm, for which he faced between five and 12 years in prison. The appeals court, however, ultimately used a milder legal qualification of the crimes with a sentencing range of between three and 10 years, because at the beginning of the attack there had been only one person on the scene to assault, so Mucha could not have originally intended to attack two people.  

When setting this new sentencing, Michal Mucha was not helped by the fact that he has already been a defendant in the courts eight times prior to this incident. Jan Mucha was sentenced to three years in prions, suspended for five years.

Both men must also jointly pay the man they injured CZK 37 000. They must also reimburse health insurance companies another CZK 52 000.   

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