A Polish woman is beginning a life sentence today after being found guilty of murdering her colleague by deliberately driving them into the Avoca River.
Csaba Orsas drowned after Marta Herda drove off the South Quay in Arklow on a bitterly cold morning in March 2013.
The 29-year-old, with an address at Pairc na Saile, Emoclew Road in Arklow, told Gardai she’d had enough of the Hungarian’s unwanted advances.
She depicted him as a man who’d fallen hopelessly in love with her and wouldn’t leave her alone, but his brother Zoltan says that wasn’t the case.
One of the first jurors through the door into the court room at 11.36 looked visibly upset. Marta Herda became a convicted murderer just moments later by a majority of 11 to 1. She had denied deliberately driving her and Csaba Orsas off the South Quay in Arklow on the morning of Mar 26th 2013.
The court heard she managed to swim to safety while her Hungarian colleague’s body washed up on a beach two miles away a few hours later.
Marta Herda worked with Csaba in the BrookLodge hotel in Wicklow where she claimed he’d fallen in love with her.
She said she was afraid of him and claimed he used to follow her home and stand outside looking in her bedroom window.
She said she couldn’t remember how he got into her car that morning but remembered hitting the accelerator because she couldn’t take it anymore.
Marta Herda made very little reaction when her interpreter whispered the jury’s verdict into her ear but she broke down a short time later and needed help to get to her feet after the mandatory life sentence was handed down.
