An alleged murder victim was “smashed against a wall” by his girlfriend, months before his death.
Rebus Stoica told a jury about a violent row between murder accused Adriana Ciurar and his younger brother Samoila.
He said the argument happened at his home in Ireland in 2019.
Twenty-five-year-old Samoila – known to friends and family as Sammy – was found severely injured by police at his home in David Street, Kirkcaldy, on Christmas Day that year.
Ciurar is on trial at the High Court in Edinburgh, accused of murdering Samoila by stabbing him and injuring him so seriously that he later died at Victoria Hospital.
Incident in Ireland
Wedding singer Rebus Stoica, 29, told jurors that his brother and Ciurar stayed for several weeks at his home in Ireland.
Speaking through an interpreter, he recalled the pair having an argument over clothing at some point during their stay.
“It was a Sunday and we were getting ready to go to church,” he said.
“They were in their bedroom. The walls are not so thick, so I overheard them.”
At first Mr Stoica said the argument was “just shouting”, but after being reminded about a police statement he gave at the time, he said: “Yes, now I remember: I told the police that I heard him being smashed into the wall.”
Mr Stoica said: “I can’t remember exactly because of the state I was in (after his brother’s death, when he made the police statement). I was completely devastated.
“I had gone to the bathroom and their bedroom door was open.
“I remember seeing my brother trying to tie his laces and then she kicked him and that’s how he ended up smashing against the wall.”
He said in his statement to police that Ciurar “grabbed his head and hit it against a wall”.
Under cross-examination by solicitor advocate Iain Paterson, Mr Stoica said that he didn’t know whether his brother was kicked or hit, but he remembered the “movement” of him hitting the wall.
Black eye photograph
Mr Stoica told Mr Paterson he had never seen his brother assault Ciurar. When shown a photograph of Ciurar with a black eye, he said: “You can tell that she’s much younger in that picture. She has been married before.”
The court heard that after the argument, Mr Stoica and his brother went to church and Ciurar went to stay with relatives in Belfast.
Mr Stoica’s wife Tabita Lacatus earlier told jurors that, in another incident, she snatched a knife from Ciurar’s hand during a row she was having with Samoila.
She said she grabbed Ciurar’s wrist when she raised the knife to waist height. “I put it away and said to her: Are you crazy?”
Mrs Lacatus denied she had made up the incident, and insisted she had never seen her brother-in-law assault Ciurar.
Ciurar, 25, of Kirkcaldy, denies murdering Samoila on Christmas Day 2019.
She was cleared of a second charge of attempting to defeat the ends of justice by falsely stating that Samoila had stabbed himself.
The trial before judge Lord Boyd continues.
