Jury hears statement from paralysed man

Angus: Crash on country road left passenger with fractured vertebrae

A court yesterday heard the testimony of a paralysed Polish man, taken at his homeland bedside two-and-a-half years on from the car crash in an Angus river gorge which left him requiring a lifetime of care.

Forestry workers Robert Buzalski, Krysztof Birula and Marcin Kopij had been drinking 30% proof vodka liqueur at the farm cottage when Mr Buzalski decided to drive them to Edzell in what Forfar Sheriff Court was told were “terrible” weather conditions.

The trial, before Sheriff Pino Di Emidio, has already heard Mr Buzalski and Mr Kopij escaped serious injury, but the crash left Mr Birula paralysed from the neck down after he suffered fractured vertebrae as the hired Hyundai spun off a farm track.

Buzalski, 36, faces an indictment alleging that he seriously injured Krysztof Birula by driving dangerously on the unclassified road leading from Cornes Cottage to Dalbog Farm, near Edzell, on August 24 2013.

The charge alleges that the crash happened when it was dark and raining, with much reduced visibility. Buzalski is alleged to have had an alcohol reading of 124 milligrammes at the time – the legal limit was 80 – and to have driven at excessive speed, braked sharply and lost control of the car, causing it to strike a banking and fall into a river bed.

The jury was then read a transcript, agreed under a special section of the law, of a statement taken from Mr Birula in February in which he recounted the events of August 2013.

The statement read: “It was dark, the weather was typical of Scotland – drizzle, rain. Buzalski was driving normally, he did not drive fast.

“Suddenly Marcin Kopij told Buzalski ‘Watch out, we’re being drawn off the road’.

“I fell off the seat and I think I hit my head. I said to Buzalski that I could not move an arm or leg.

“The next thing I remember is waking up in hospital.”

Fellow passenger Marcin Kopij, 37, said: “From what I noticed he was not driving at great speed, from the road it was not possible to drive at great speed, I think it was more the weather.”

The trial, before a jury of eight women and seven men, continues today.

It was dark, the weather was typical of Scotland – drizzle, rain. Buzalski was driving normally, he did not drive fast. KRYSZTOF BIRULA