Piotr Rafacz was found dead in his north Belfast flat A woman who admitted the manslaughter of her husband has been jailed for two years at Belfast Crown Court.
The body of Piotr Rafacz, 29, was found at the home he shared with his wife Teresa and their three-year-old son, on the Cliftonville Road on 18 July, 2009.
Mr Justice Hart said Mrs Rafacz, 29, killed him as a “result of a momentary lapse of self-control by her in a spasm of anger”.
He said her husband had left their toddler son home alone to go drinking.
“It is proper to regard her conduct as lacking the necessary intent to kill or inflict really serious personal injury, not withstanding the severity of the kick and stamping to his head”
Mr Justice Hart Crown court judge
Mr Justice Hart said that when Rafacz went to work at 6.45 am she left her son in the care of her husband, an unemployed alcoholic.
He said that he accepted “that Rafacz returned home when she was tired after a long hard day at work to find her husband in a drunken condition”.
The judge said it was obvious, given the lack of any empty bottles in the flat, that he had left their baby son, “hungry and on his own in the flat for a lengthy period of time in all possibility several hours.”
Rafacz inflicted “serious harm upon her husband when she kicked him and stamped on his head when he lay on the ground”, he said.
He said that lashing out in the way she did at her drunken husband “as he lay defenceless on the ground amounted to ‘gratuitous violence'”.
However, he added “it is proper to regard her conduct as lacking the necessary intent to kill or inflict really serious personal injury, not withstanding the severity of the kick and stamping to his head”.
The judge said he took into account her guilty plea and other mitigating circumstances.
He sentenced her to four years – two years to be spent in custody and two on licence.
However, her time in custody will also take into account the time she was on remand before being granted bail while awaiting her trial.
Her 27-year-old brother, Pawel Czop, who had admitted withholding information from the police, was sentenced to 240 hours community service.
The judge said he did not “believe any useful purpose would be served by sending him back into custody” for a short period of time.
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