A man who knifed his best friend to death in an attack at a block of flats in Dundee has had his sentence reduced by more than a third.
Aldis Minakovskis, 25, was found guilty after trial earlier this year of stabbing 34-year-old Aigars Upenieks in Thurso Crescent, Menzieshill, in December 2015.
A High Court trial previously heard how the pair, both from Latvia, had ended up in a drunken fight — during which Minakovskis grabbed a knife and stabbed his victim three times.
He stood trial for the murder of the dad-of-five but a jury found him guilty of a reduced charge of culpable homicide. However, they rejected his special defence of self-defence.
Minakovskis had claimed he’d grabbed the knife to protect himself as he came to blows with Mr Upenieks.
The two men had known each other since childhood and travelled to Scotland together just months before the tragic incident.
Minakovskis was sentenced to 13 years and eight months in jail for the killing. Lord Uist told him: “The jury made a finding that the killing was not provoked by your victim.”
He added: “The appropriate sentence for this crime, which comes very high on the scale of crimes of culpable homicide, is 15 years’ imprisonment but I must give you credit for the period of eight months you spent in prison on remand before you were granted bail, which is the equivalent of a sentence of 16 months’ imprisonment.
“The sentence which I impose is therefore 13 years eight months imprisonment, to run from February 10, 2017.”
However, Minakovskis launched an appeal against the length of his sentence, which has now been reduced by five years to eight years and eight months.
No details have been revealed about why the appeal was granted.
https://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/fp/man-guilty-killing-latvian-dundee-close/
This article originally appeared on the Evening Telegraph website. For more information, read about our new combined website.