A pair of brothers who came off worse in a car wash brawl have been cleared of violent disorder.
Ionut and Minel Albastroiu, 28 and 27, denied turning up outside the Shiny Hand Car Wash in Magdalen Road for a pre-arranged meeting last October – and claimed they’d acted in lawful self-defence after being set-upon by a mob-handed trio.
Jurors at Oxford Crown Court agreed, taking three-and-a-half hours to acquit both brothers of violent disorder and possession of offensive weapons. The two men, both of Rosebery Avenue, Tottenham, were found not guilty by a majority decision.
The brawl was caught on CCTV. The Albastroius, said to have been in Oxford on October 8 last year to look at vehicles to buy, parked up outside the Christian Life Centre at around 1.20pm having earlier eaten lunch at a Cowley Road restaurant.
They stood next to the car, with Ionut seen smoking a cigarette.
A grey Vauxhall Insignia pulled up nose-to-nose with the brothers’ Mercedes. Three men got out the vehicle and squared up to the brothers, who armed themselves with ‘metal poles’ from their own cars.
The two men fled towards the Shiny car wash, where Ionut was stabbed repeatedly in the legs by the other men. Minel threw a chair towards the opponents in a bid to scare them off. The opponents were said to have shouted threats to kill them.
Ionut was taken to hospital by his younger brother, where they were both arrested.
The older brother – who had come to the UK from Romania around three weeks earlier - told police that he’d seen the driver of the Vauxhall earlier in the day. He had given him a ‘strange’ look.
Of the three men in the Vauxhall only one, Laurentiu Valeriu Baicu, had been identified. He had previous convictions for attempted murder and possession of firearms and remains at large.
Closing the case for Ionut Albastroiu, Dana Bilan suggested to the jury they may think it wasn’t right or fair that her client and his brother were being prosecuted.
“You may feel the wrong people are in the dock,” she said.
The ‘critical minute’ for her client had been between 1.57pm and 1.58pm, when police logs showed he went from being treated as a victim to being considered a suspect.
Judge Michael Gledhill QC, summing up the case to the jury, said there was ‘no doubt at all’ the incident amounted to violent disorder. The question was whether the Albastroius acted in self-defence.
The judge added: “The prosecution case is that this is no accidental meeting – strangers attacking these two defendants so violently. This is a meeting arranged in advance and took a very nasty turn very quickly.
“The defence case is again straightforward. This is an accidental meeting. It is not planned at all, we just parked up after our lunch, having a chat, discussing whatever. In the course of standing there on that sunny afternoon these unknown males in the car turn up, no reason at all, violently attack us and we simply acted in self-defence.
“What luck we had in having those implements, those metal poles near at hand in the car to defend ourselves when we were attacked by men with knives and poles.”
He instructed the jury to try the case on the evidence. “By taking the oath or affirmation you do not leave behind your common sense,” he added.
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