Rihards Lavickis pleads guilty to manslaughter

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Rihards Lavickis has pleaded not guilty to murder and guilty to manslaughter. His trial was before the Central Criminal Court. The proceedings were reported on 15 March 2019.

He was charged with the murder of Arkadiusz ‘Arik’ Czajkowski, who was stabbed to death outside Longford Shopping Centre on 1 November 2016.

The jury heard memos of Lavickis’s garda interviews. He described taking a knife, waiting for Czajkowski and striking him three times. He said he had taken the knife because he had never known Czajkowski to have a fair fight, and that Czajkowski had threatened to kill his family.

The State had closed its case, and Justice Michael White asked the jury to return to court the following Wednesday.