TWO men have been jailed after breaking into a stranger’s flat – kicking and choking the terrified couple inside – during a drunken spree of offending.
Dmitrijs Kuzmins (34) and Aleksej Vladimirov (30) were in Jersey for one night on 5 September, when they also punched a man in the face and smashed the windscreen of a van.
At a sentencing hearing in the Royal Court on Friday, Lieutenant Bailiff Anthony Olsen told the pair that “the lives of many people have been affected by this chaotic ten minutes – most of all your own and those of your immediate families”.
Kuzmins, from Latvia, and Vladimirov, from Lithuania, had been working on a wind farm and were celebrating the end of the project on the night of 5 September before planning to fly home via London the following day.
Crown Advocate Carla Carvalho, prosecuting, said the pair had been sitting on the grass area near the Cenotaph when Kuzmins asked a passing stranger if he could borrow a cigarette lighter.
The stranger lent him his lighter but Kuzmins refused to give it back, and when he pulled the lighter out of Kuzmins’s hand and began to walk away, the defendant punched him in the face.
Shortly after, as the stranger was walking to his flat, he heard the windscreen of a parked Volkswagen Transporter van being smashed and saw a whiskey bottle roll off the bonnet. The bottle was later found to bear Kuzmins’s fingerprints.
Kuzmins mistakenly believed that the stranger had stolen his mobile phone, the court heard, and entered his block of flats – but then barged into a flat occupied by another couple.
Advocate Carvalho said: “The woman saw two shadows in the lounge. The door flew open and she said: ‘The next thing I knew they were in the room and saying something about a phone’.
“They punched and kicked her partner repeatedly and grabbed her around the throat to choke her.” Advocate Carvalho said the woman no longer felt safe in her own home.
The two men quickly left but were arrested by States police officers at 3.15am, who found that both were drunk.
They pleaded guilty to breaking and entering, assault and malicious damage.
Advocate Carvalho said the men had no previous convictions, and recommended a sentence of three years and eight months for Kuzmins and three years and six months for Vladimirov.
Advocate Allana Binnie, defending Kuzmins, pointed out that the offences took place over ten minutes and the men had been in the couple’s flat for just three minutes, and said: “If there was ever a case that could be described as ‘a moment of madness’, then this is it.
“It is a moment of madness that has cost the defendants dear. They were celebrating the end of a work project and unfortunately they celebrated by drinking too much.”
She said Kuzmins was “a hard-working family man” and added: “He is remorseful and understands the impact on the victims.”
And she said the sentence recommended by the prosecution was “too high by at least a year”.
Advocate Estelle Burns, defending Vladimirov, said Kuzmins had been “the main aggressor”, punching the man with the cigarette lighter, smashing the windscreen and breaking the door of the flat, and said: “Mr Vladimirov did not lay a finger on the woman.”
She added: “He deeply regrets that he didn’t just walk away and realises he should have done. There is genuine regret and remorse.”
She suggested “a sentence in the region of two years would be appropriate”.
Mr Olsen said: “As well as being serious, the offence was an exercise of total futility.”
Vladimirov was jailed for three years and Kuzmins was jailed for three years and six weeks.
Mr Olsen was joined by Jurats Steven Austin-Vautier and Michael Entwistle.
