Murder of a Ukrainian Teenager in Ireland: Lawyers Reveal Details
New statements from the defense have emerged in the trial regarding the murder of 17-year-old Ukrainian Vadym Davydenko in Ireland. The suspect’s lawyers claim that he left Somalia dressed as a woman to avoid being recruited by an Islamist militant group. At the same time, investigators believe that he may have changed his date of birth multiple times in order to obtain asylum.
This is reported by the Irish Times.
An Irish court is still verifying the suspect’s age, although the Irish Child and Family Agency (Tusla) no longer considers him a minor. Despite this, he remains in custody at the Oberstown juvenile detention center.
The Somali man’s lawyer, Deirdre Lynch, read out a Tusla report in court stating that an agency official met with the boy in August 2025 and recorded his account of fleeing Somalia.
He said he left Somalia in 2021 after the Islamic terrorist group Al-Shabaab took his father and “tried to force him to join their army.” He claimed he was tortured himself—leaving scars on his face and arm.
During the escape, his uncle dressed him in women’s clothing and arranged for him to leave Somalia. They traveled on foot and by car to Libya, arriving there in 2022. There, “they were taken to a place where they were held for ransom, and he had to work and clean like a slave.”
After eight months, they were released, so they boarded a boat to cross the sea, but due to the weather, the sea was rough, so the boat broke apart, and some people died, including the suspect’s uncle.
He himself made it to shore and ended up in prison again, where, according to him, he was sexually assaulted and beaten by the police. Then, along with other Somalis, he made his way to Italy, and from there to the United Kingdom.
Detective Sergeant Mark Quill of the Culook Police Station, who is leading the investigation into Davydenko’s death, reiterated his “categorical” belief that this young man was over 18 at the time of the alleged crime and is now 19 or 20 years old.
According to his statements, as reported by the Irish Times, the suspect gave his date of birth as May 8, 2007, in Lampedusa, Italy, and August 5, 2006, in Bologna.
He arrived in Ireland after spending 14 months in the UK as a “stowaway in a container.” On July 22, 2025, he applied to the Office of International Protection and, during registration, gave a date of birth of June 20, 2006, meaning he would have been 19 years old at the time.
On October 20, 2025, Quill received an email from a man in Ethiopia who identified himself as the suspect’s brother and “wanted to help” with the investigation. He provided the boy’s birth certificate, which listed his date of birth as October 8, 2006.
However, in January of this year, the detective received another email from the same address containing a birth certificate in which the date of birth was listed as October 8, 2008. The man, who identified himself as the suspect’s brother, apologized and said that the first birth certificate he had sent contained an error.
As a reminder, unknown assailants killed a 31-year-old Ukrainian citizen in Ireland.
Also, a Ukrainian soldier was brutally murdered in the Kyiv region.
