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Razvan Sirbu murder to be featured in TV documentary on effect on Tovil community

The brutal murder of a homeless man in Tovil will be featured in a Channel 4 documentary next week.

Razvan Sirbu, 21, a Romanian national, was sleeping rough in a tent just off Crisbrook Meadow in the Loose Conservation Area, when he was bludgeoned to death on May 6, 2017.

The programme by Arrow Media and entitled A Year of British Murder, will focus not so much on the crime itself as on the effect on the local community and how people in the normally quiet area, a popular spot with families to feed the ducks on the millponds, have coped.

Flowers left in Crisbrook Meadow following the murder
Flowers left in Crisbrook Meadow following the murder

It will be broadcast on Monday (January 21) at 9pm on Channel 4.

Two men , Charlie White and Alex Macdonald, both 19 at the time, were convicted of murder and jailed for life.

A third man Jimmy Buckley, then 20, who was found to be mentally unfit to plead, was detained by a judge indefinitely under a hospital order.

Macdonald was previously of Regency Place, Maidstone; White previously of Quarry Road, Maidstone, and Buckley of Capell Close, Coxheath.

Mr Sirbu, who had been given a tent by a homeless charity, had been living rough in different locations in Tovil for several weeks.

The scene where the body was discovered
The scene where the body was discovered

The cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head and torso. He suffered multiple skull fractures, multiple facial bone fractures and other injuries, including broken ribs.

At the time, Judge Jeremy Carey called the murder “a shameful, senseless act of mindless brutality.”

Several dozen members of the Valley Conservation Society, which jointly owns Crisbrook Meadow with Tovil Parish Council, had gathered on the morning of the discovery of the body to carry out a litter-pick, which of course had to be called off.

The murder victim: Razvan Sirbu
The murder victim: Razvan Sirbu
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