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Rihards Lavickis: warned by Gardaí, then armed for murder

After reporting a broken window, the Latvian native told Gardaí he would “sort out” the man he blamed. Officers warned him not to. Lavickis took a knife, concealed himself beside a Longford street, gave chase and stabbed Akadiusz Czajkowski through the heart.

Published 26 July 2026 · Remigration Ireland case ledger
3 woundsOne fatal stab to the heart
2 trialsFirst jury failed to agree
UnanimousFinal murder verdict
LifeMandatory sentence

Rihards Lavickis did not encounter his victim by accident. The prosecution evidence, later followed by a unanimous murder verdict, was that he went looking for Akadiusz “Arik” Czajkowski while armed, hid in a gap in a wall and ran at him with a raised knife. Seconds later, the Polish father of two had been stabbed three times in broad daylight outside Longford Shopping Centre.

A drug debt, violence and broken windows

The Central Criminal Court heard that Lavickis and Czajkowski had once been neighbours. Lavickis bought €300 worth of drugs from him. The court was told that Czajkowski later attacked Lavickis with a knuckle duster and that the debt was reduced to €100 when Lavickis decided not to press charges.

Relations continued to deteriorate. Lavickis held Czajkowski responsible for windows at his family home being broken on repeated occasions. On Halloween night in 2016, CCTV showed Lavickis and two friends running after Czajkowski arrived in a car with two other men. A friend testified that the group hid while the car drove around looking for them.

Those threats and earlier events formed part of the defence case. They did not amount to a judicial finding that the killing was justified, and the final jury rejected the routes by which the defence asked it to return manslaughter rather than murder.

“We will deal with it”

At about 3am on 1 November 2016, another window was broken. Lavickis called Gardaí that morning, identified Czajkowski as the person he suspected and said he would “get” or “sort out” him. Officers told him not to and said they would deal with the matter.

Lavickis nevertheless took a knife and went looking for Czajkowski. When he saw him approaching, he concealed himself in a gap in a wall. CCTV then recorded Lavickis emerging, crossing the road and chasing the other man with his arm raised and a knife in his hand.

The stabbing itself was not captured, but Lavickis admitted carrying it out. A post-mortem found three wounds. A stab wound to the heart was fatal; a wound to Czajkowski’s finger was classified as defensive.

His own interviews

The second trial heard Garda interview memoranda in which Lavickis said he took the knife “to get” Czajkowski. TheJournal reported that he described initial attempts to strike with the knife as not working and said that he then “put more effort into it”.

The defence argued that Lavickis lacked the intent required for murder or had lost self-control through provocation. The prosecution argued that driving a knife into a person’s chest carried the natural and probable consequence of death or serious injury. Intent to cause either was sufficient for murder.

One failed jury, then a unanimous verdict

Lavickis pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter at his first Central Criminal Court trial in February 2018. The Director of Public Prosecutions rejected the lesser plea. After the jury reported that it had reached an impasse, it ultimately failed to return a verdict.

That outcome was not an acquittal. Lavickis was tried again in March 2019. The second jury deliberated for just over three hours and unanimously found him guilty of murder. On 21 March 2019, Mr Justice Michael White imposed the mandatory life sentence.

Case chronology

Nationality and immigration facts

Irish court reports describe Lavickis as originally from Latvia or as a Latvian native. The prosecution opening reported by The Irish Times said he had lived in Ireland since he was 14. Latvia is a member of the European Union.

No reliable source located for this file establishes unlawful residence, an asylum claim, deportation proceedings, re-entry after removal or any immigration offence. Nationality does not establish any of those matters. Nor did the research locate a reliable report of prior convictions or a later appeal outcome. This page therefore makes no such claim.

What can—and cannot—be priced

The Irish Prison Service reported a 2024 average cost of €99,072 per available staffed prison space, excluding capital expenditure. There is no honest full-sentence multiplication for a mandatory life term: its future duration is unknown.

The interval from the first reported remand on 3 November 2016 to sentence on 21 March 2019 was 868 days. If—and only if—Lavickis was continuously imprisoned throughout that interval, mechanically applying the 2024 rate would produce an illustrative figure of about €235,445. The located remand report expressly proves custody only until 10 November 2016, not every day in the interval. The €235,445 figure is therefore a conditional scenario, not an established bill.

The benchmark is an average staffed-space cost rather than marginal spending attributable to one prisoner. It does not price the 40-officer Garda investigation described by the local superintendent, either murder trial, prosecution, court administration, legal aid, the psychiatric assessment, victim services or the permanent loss suffered by Czajkowski’s family. No complete public-cost total was located.

What the record establishes

A man told Gardaí he intended to deal with the person he blamed for an attack on his home. He was warned to leave it to them. He instead armed himself, sought the man out, hid as he approached and chased him across a public street before inflicting the fatal wound. The first jury’s inability to agree required a second trial; the second jury convicted him unanimously of murder.

The strongest accountability case is the proven one. It does not require an invented immigration breach, a guessed criminal history or a fictional lifetime cost.

Sources