Woman breaks down in witness box of murder trial

A young Estonian woman broke down in tears at the Central Criminal Court today as she recalled seeing two strangers drag her boyfriend from his car and kick him to death.

Jelena Sirokova was giving evidence on day one of the trial of a 28-year-old Dublin man accused of murdering a man in his 20s, also from Estonia.

Ian Daly of Moatview Drive in Priorswood has pleaded not guilty to murdering Valeri Ranert on or about April 30, 2007 at Naul Road in Swords. He also denies hijacking the victim’s Volkswagen Golf on the same occasion.

Through an interpreter, Ms Sirokova told Michael Durack SC, prosecuting, that on Sunday night, April 29, 2007, she had gone with her boyfriend of two years to the viewing ground at Dublin Airport, and parked facing the runway.

They were there about an hour when a young man knocked on the window of the passenger seat where Mr Ranert was sitting. He rolled down the window and the stranger asked for a light, she said. Mr Ranert said he was sorry, that he didn’t smoke, and he closed the window.

Ms Sirokova said the young man knocked again and Mr Ranert rolled down the window and repeated that he didn’t smoke and didn’t have a light.

“The young man started screaming and asking Valeri to give him his phone.” she recalled, explaining that he also tried to kick her boyfriend through the open window.

She said she then jumped into the back seat and her boyfriend jumped into the driver seat. “Valeri wanted to give him his phone,” she added.

She said her boyfriend asked her to phone the gardaí but she didn’t know the number.

“He started the car. The people around the car started breaking the windows in,” she said, recalling that there were at least two people as the windows were being broken from both sides.

“The young man was trying to open the door and Valeri was trying to close the door,” she said. “The young man from the passenger side went around to the driver side and the two of them managed to open the door and one of them kicked Valeri in the face.

She cried as she explained that her boyfriend was unconscious from this kick, but that the two men pulled him out of the car to the ground some distance away and started kicking him.

She broke down as she tried but failed to remember which part of her boyfriend’s body was being kicked and the court rose for a few minutes to allow her to take a break.

Ms Sirokova said she managed to get out of the car and started running through long grass, but she came to a fence and had to turn back. She fell to the ground and covered her face: “I didn’t want to see anything,” she said.

The witness said that when the attackers took off in their car and Mr Ranert’s car, she ran to her boyfriend lying on the road.

“I started shaking him and shouting: 'Valeri, Valeri, Valeri',” she recalled. “He wasn’t responding. He was unconscious.”

Ms Sirokova eventually got help from a man in a nearby jeep. John Rothwell, who called the emergency services, later told the court that she was frantic when she knocked on his window asking for help.

Ms Sirokova said a phone on the ground beside her boyfriend then began ringing and she answered it, thinking it was his. The person on the other end spoke in English and she passed the phone onto a member of the airport police.

Opening the case to the jury, Mr Duvack said that a mobile phone registered to Ian Daly was found at the scene and that it was the prosecution’s case that he was one of the men who kicked the victim to death.

The jury also heard that Mr Ranert’s car was found burning hours later in an abandoned halting site near Moatview Gardens and that the Ford Fiesta that the culprits were thought to have used was found burnt out in nearby Belcamp Lane.

The trial, which is expected to last six days, will continue today before Mr Justice George Birmingham and a jury of nine men and three women.