The former deputy mayor shot his lover’s husband, he is on trial for attempted murder

The event happened at the end of January 2022. At the time, the former local politician was in a hotel room in Straškov in Litoměřice with his girlfriend. Her husband entered there and a fight ensued after verbal abuse.

Prosecutor Vladimír Jan stated in the indictment that Závada put his self-loading pistol with the bolt cocked to the victim’s stomach and fired the weapon once. According to Jan, the man was treated for six weeks, has lasting effects and the injury could have threatened his life.

The defect threatens ten to eighteen years in prison, the public prosecutor proposed an eight-year sentence.

The defendant told the court that they had arranged to meet his girlfriend at a hotel. He testified that after sex he went to the rest house for food, they ate it together in the room and then the woman went to get her phone in the hallway.

According to his words, Zavada put on pants and a jacket and was getting ready to leave, taking his keys and the gun he usually carried with him. At that moment, he heard a crash in the corridor, when he took the gun in his right hand, he heard a huge blow, turned around and there stood the husband of the woman with whom Závada was in the hotel.

A shot was fired during the chaos, the defendant says

“He grabbed me by the neck, started swearing at me,” said Závada. He was allegedly hit in the face. “And during the chaos, the confusion, the madhouse, a shot rang out,” he said, adding that he was then shot several more times in the face and stomach before the man finally pulled himself together and left. Zadava said he took the gun and drove home, changed into cycling gear and headed to practice.

“This unfortunate incident has affected my entire family,” he said, adding that he was sorry for the injury to the victim.

The judge drew Závada’s attention to the contradictions between his testimony today and the testimony in the preliminary proceedings, when he stated that the pistol shot came out at a different stage of the fight. The glitch said that now he had time to better remember how it went. According to him, he normally carried the gun unlocked and nothing ever happened.

The court adjourned the main trial until mid-November, will summon the victim and the woman with whom Závada was in the hotel.

Závada used to be a member of the ODS leadership in the Ústí Region. Years ago, he was dismissed from the position of deputy mayor of Lovosice because he allegedly covered up the car accident of a drunken former judge of the Supreme Court, Zdenek Sovák.

In court, he was fully acquitted of the indictment due to abuse of the powers of a public official and taking bribes. The court refused to take into account the police wiretaps, because they related to another case of Vladislav Větrovec, who was said to have participated in the rigged auditions involving Ústí judge Jiří Berka and also figured in Sovák’s case.