Peter Buckingham was sentenced to 27 years in prison for mudering Peter Mikiewicz.
A drug addict who stabbed a popular South West London street sweeper to death was sentenced to 27 years in jail today after being found guilty of murder.
Peter Buckingham, 31, stabbed Piotr Mikiewicz in the chest after the Hammersmith and Fulham street cleaner caught him stealing a laptop from a home in Rylett Road last August.
When Mr Mikiewicz started striking Buckingham with his broom, he got in his car before leaping out and knifing him in the heart.
He was taken to St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, where he died from wounds to the chest.
At the trial, prosecutor Aftab Jafferjee QC hailed the Polish worker as responsible and public-spirited.
“Mr Mickiewicz, armed only with his dust cart and broom, took on the defendant. He had a laudable sense of civic duty and right and wrong. It was to cost him his life,” he said.
Buckingham was arrested at his girlfriend’s house, where police discovered that Buckingham was booked on to a flight to Cyprus.
He told the court that he turned to burglary to feed his £100-a-day crack cocaine and heroin habit.
Cllr Greg Smith, H&F Council Deputy Leader, said that taking a life to feed a drug habit was about as low as it gets.
“Justice has been served by convicting this evil man for his unforgiveable act of selfish violence,” he said.
“Piotr was a thoroughly decent, brave and hardworking man who was murdered for doing what he considered his civic duty. Piotr will never be able to do the job he loved again but he will also never be forgotten around here.”
Donations to the Piotr Mikiewicz memorial fund, which was set up for his widow and immediate family, flooded in last year – with the total reaching nearly £30,000.
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