Lawsuit charges drug dealer with girl’s death, 15-year prison sentence possible

Yesterday the trial of convicted drug dealer Ondrej Gyngo, charged with causing the death of a 17-year-old drug addict, began at the Regional Court in Liberec. In 2007 the girl jumped to her death from the seventh floor of a block of flats in Jablonec nad Nisou after an overdose of pervitin. Gyngo faces between 10 and 15 years in prison if found guilty.

The state prosecutor has charged Gyngo (52) with providing the girl with two doses of pervitin in rapid succession during the night of 19 July 2008. Under the influence of hallucinations, the addicted girl went out onto a balcony the next afternoon, swung from it and then let go. She fell onto the lawn below from a great height and died on the spot. Gyngo, a drug dealer and burglar from Liberec who has been previously sentenced for 11 different crimes and who has confessed to dealing in pervitin and shoplifting, refuses any responsibility for the addict’s death. His usual clients include Czechs, one Pole and many Roma. Both Gyngo and the deceased are members of the Roma minority.

“The use of pervitin has spread extensively among the Roma in the Liberec region in recent years. We are in an enormous mess because of it – drugs lead to crime, prostitution and serious illness,” Miroslav Kotlár, chair of the Liberec Roma Association, told ČTK.

During the main hearing, the sister of the deceased said Gyngo was responsible for her sister’s misfortune. “He taught her to take drugs, in the end all she wanted to do was get high. She was completely aggressive and irresponsible,” the victim’s sister testified. Another witness described Gyngo as a warm-hearted buffoon who didn’t even make that much money through his dealing. Girls were said to voluntarily seek him out, “begging” for drugs.

The lawsuit charges Gyngo with giving or selling pervitin to 24 people, many of whom were under the age of 18 or even 15, primarily in Jabolonec nad Nisou and Liberec. He faces up to 12 years in prison for selling drugs to minors. He also faces charges of extortion, as he allegedly demanded sex in exchange for pervitin.

Experts said the deceased was suffering from both anxiety and hallucinations when she jumped off the balcony. She was confused and under psychological stress. Just before the accident she was looking for something in her father’s closet. Gyngo left her in the apartment with an acquaintance of his prior to her jumping off the balcony. “I was not supervising her when she did it,” Gyngo’s acquaintance said immediately after the tragedy. A witness to the accident from the next-door apartment told the police: “The girl said, ‘I’m swinging, I’m going to fly,’ and she seemed delighted.”

The girl had already overdosed on pervitin once in May 2008 and ended up in a psychiatric treatment facility with intoxication. Several days later, her mother brought her home. A month and a half after that, her daughter was dead.

Expert witnesses characterized Gyngo as an asocial, self-centered person of below-average intellect. Even though he also took pervitin, he never became addicted to it. Drugs, gambling and sex were his dominant interests, and he offered pervitin in exchange for sex. His clients included young runaways from juvenile detention facilities. The experts testified that Gyngo is a social parasite, abusing and extorting others, with inclinations towards fraud and subterfuge.

Prior to being taken into custody, Gyngo lived on welfare, other state subsidies, and partially through shoplifting, buying drugs with stolen merchandise. “For example, I stole shampoo from one shop repeatedly,” Gyngo testified. His trial continues today.