MURDER TRIAL: Testimony Continues In Polak Case

Day four of testimony continued Friday in the murder trial of Richard Polak.

Prosecutors claim it was pay-back as why Polak opened fire on a Des Moines home last August.

They say a drug deal went bad months earlier.

Polak was beaten up, and the scene was set for the drive-by shooting..

“When he left a guy named Josh he said another name but I can’t remember who it was hit him with a pipe, robbed him, beat him pretty bad,” says Jeffery Smitts of Des Moines.

Smitts, who’d purchased meth from Polak in the past, says Polak promised to get the people back who left him with a wired-shut jaw for 3 months.

“Just that he was going to get them back because it put him in the hole with whoever he got his stuff from and that he was going to get them back, he didn’t elaborate on how but said he was going to get them back,” says Smitts.

The defense argues Smitts was just helping out police to get out of his own drug mess.

They maintain it couldn’t have been revenge because Polak didn’t know his attackers.

“I don’t know these people, I’m sorry, I wish I did,” said Polak during his police interrogation.

Polak told police he got beat up at a gas station not at a home, a theory the police quickly dispelled by reviewing the security video from the gas station.

Polak said if he would have known who attacked him he wouldn’t have waited to beat them up, however he was unaware who his attackers were.

“If I would have known about those I would have gone back the very day I got out of the hospital and did something but I don’t know, I must have bumped into people at the gas station I don’t know,” said Polak during his police interrogation.

The court dismissed at noon on Friday and will be picking up testimony first thing on Monday.