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Tomasz Rozpeda: 27 head and neck injuries and six years for killing his friend

The Polish national told emergency services that Maciej Nowak had gone crazy and hit himself. Pathology evidence found blunt-force injuries inconsistent with self-harm. Rozpeda pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received six years.

Published 26 July 2026 · Remigration Ireland case ledger

27 injuriesHead and neck

6 yearsManslaughter sentence

3 priorsPolish convictions

~€255,000Known-custody illustration

Maciej Nowak was celebrating his 32nd birthday in a rented County Tipperary house. Hours later he was dead from blunt-force head trauma. The man who killed him offered an account that the medical evidence rejected, then remained in custody for more than two and a half years before receiving a six-year manslaughter sentence.

A birthday gathering ends in death

Nowak and Rozpeda were friends. On St Stephen's Day 2023, they were among those at a birthday gathering in Ballycranna, near Kilross. The Central Criminal Court heard that both men had consumed alcohol and amphetamines to excess.

In the early hours of 27 December, the Garda Armed Support Unit entered the house. Nowak was found unresponsive in a downstairs room at about 4am and was pronounced dead.

A post-mortem examination identified 27 distinct injuries and bruises to his head and neck. The cause of death was blunt-force trauma to the head. Evidence that his brain had twisted within his skull indicated repeated impacts against an object or flat surface.

The emergency call and the pathology evidence

Rozpeda called emergency services and claimed that Nowak had gone crazy and hit himself. That claim did not survive the medical evidence: the pathologist concluded that the injuries were not self-inflicted.

Blood-stained broken bottles were found on the kitchen floor, but the evidence reported from court did not establish a particular weapon or a complete blow-by-blow sequence. Rozpeda initially sought to distance himself from what happened. He later contacted Nowak's fiancee and said that he had put Nowak in hospital.

Nowak had alcohol and a high level of amphetamine in his system. Although the court heard that the drug level could have been fatal, pathology ruled it out as the cause of death. He died from the blunt-force injuries.

Murder charge replaced by manslaughter plea

Rozpeda was initially brought before Nenagh District Court on an assault-causing-harm charge and was later charged with murder. On 27 March 2026, he pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to the manslaughter of Nowak. The Director of Public Prosecutions accepted the plea, with the murder count to be formally discontinued.

Ms Justice Eileen Creedon set a headline sentence of nine years. The judge reduced it to six years after taking account of mitigation including the early plea, apology and acceptance of culpability. The plea also spared witnesses living abroad from having to return for a trial. The sentence was backdated to 28 December 2023, when Rozpeda entered custody.

The court was told that Rozpeda had three previous convictions in Poland for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs and possession of narcotic drugs. Reports said that he had no relevant previous or subsequent convictions in Ireland.

Case chronology

26 December 2023: Nowak marks his 32nd birthday at the Ballycranna house near Kilross.
Early 27 December 2023: Gardaí find him unresponsive at about 4am. He is pronounced dead.
28 December 2023: Rozpeda enters custody, the date to which his eventual sentence is backdated.
30 December 2023: He appears at Nenagh District Court on an initial charge of assault causing harm and is remanded.
27 March 2026: The DPP accepts his guilty plea to manslaughter at the Central Criminal Court.
6 July 2026: A nine-year headline term is reduced to a six-year sentence, backdated to December 2023.

What the prison term illustrates

The Irish Prison Service's 2024 system average was €99,072 per available staffed prison space, excluding capital expenditure. From 28 December 2023 to this page's publication date, the custody credited against Rozpeda's sentence covers 941 days, or about 2.58 years. Applying the later IPS benchmark as a flat illustration produces a figure of approximately €255,000.

If the entire six-year sentence were served in custody, the same static calculation would be €594,432. That is a conditional illustration, not a forecast: remission, release arrangements or any later transfer could shorten the time actually served.

Neither number is a prisoner-specific bill or a marginal cost. The IPS figure is a system-wide average applied retrospectively here for scale. It excludes capital expenditure and does not capture the Garda Armed Support Unit response, investigation, forensic pathology, prosecution, courts, legal aid or the human cost to Nowak's family and fiancee.

What the record establishes

Irish court reporting expressly identifies Rozpeda as a Polish national and records three earlier Polish convictions. It does not identify him as an asylum seeker or report any deportation or removal process, and this page makes no such claim. Poland is an EU member state.

The final offence is manslaughter, not murder. The precise sequence and any weapon were not established in the located reports. What is established is that Nowak sustained 27 head and neck injuries, that pathology contradicted the self-injury account, and that Rozpeda admitted unlawfully killing him.