Łukasz Litewka

Łukasz Karol Litewka (9 May 1989 – 23 April 2026) was a Polish sociologist, local councillor and member of the Sejm. Born in Sosnowiec, in the Silesian Voivodeship, he sat in the 10th-term Sejm for the New Left in the parliamentary club of The Left, representing constituency no. 32, which the Sejm register names Katowice. He took the oath on 13 November 2023, and the mandate expired on the day he died.

He had been a Sosnowiec city councillor since 2014. In the previous parliamentary election, standing for the Democratic Left Alliance in the same district, he received 11,733 votes and remained a councillor. In the October 2023 election he was the New Left candidate with the largest personal vote in constituency no. 32, which covers Sosnowiec, Dąbrowa Górnicza, Jaworzno and the counties of Będzin and Zawiercie and returns nine deputies: placed last on the list, he received 40,579 votes, ahead of Ewa Malik of Law and Justice (39,498) and of the list leader, Włodzimierz Czarzasty (22,332). Both Litewka and Czarzasty won seats. Banners in that campaign set photographs, names and a telephone contact for dogs awaiting adoption at a local shelter beside Litewka’s own name and picture.

He was also known for charitable collections publicised through social media, raising money for children’s medical treatment, rehabilitation equipment, people hurt in accidents, and help for animals. In 2023 he founded the TeamLitewka foundation, which continued appeals of that kind, including a collection for the treatment of Lenka Kozieł of Orzesze.

On 23 April 2026, after 13:00, Litewka was killed at the age of 36 while cycling on Kazimierzowska Street in Dąbrowa Górnicza, on the road between that city and Sosnowiec, when a car struck him. Prosecutors said the oncoming Mitsubishi, driven by a 57-year-old resident of Sosnowiec who stated that he did not remember the impact, had crossed onto the opposite lane. The driver was charged with causing a fatal traffic accident and left custody the following Tuesday after posting 40,000 zł in bail; Bartosz Kilian, spokesman for the District Prosecutor’s Office in Sosnowiec, said the office had appealed and would seek unconditional detention. A state funeral followed in Sosnowiec on Wednesday 29 April 2026: Mass at 13:30 in the Church of St Joachim, celebrated by Bishop Artur Ważny of Sosnowiec, and burial in the parish cemetery on Zuzanny Street. President Karol Nawrocki and Marta Nawrocka, Prime Minister Donald Tusk and other politicians attended. At the family’s request the Mass and the graveside were closed to the media, and relatives asked mourners to support charities and animal shelters instead of bringing flowers. Nawrocki decided on a posthumous Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.

Early life and education

Family and Zagórze

Łukasz Karol Litewka was born on 9 May 1989 in Sosnowiec, in Poland’s Silesian Voivodeship. The Sejm register of deputies records that date and place together with the second given name Karol. A catalogue of people holding public office, maintained by the Institute of National Remembrance, lists the same birth data and names his father as Zdzisław and his mother as Barbara.

He grew up in Zagórze. A 2023 TVN24 profile called it Sosnowiec’s largest district, and OKO.press described it as the city’s largest prefabricated housing estate. Accounts of the household say that his father worked as a miner and that his mother sold vegetables from a market stall: Dzień Dobry TVN stated both occupations, and OKO.press attributed the same description to Gazeta Wyborcza. Viva, citing relatives and acquaintances, also placed his childhood in Zagórze and described a home in which family duties were stressed. OKO.press wrote that he entered local politics abruptly, to the surprise of a family circle that had not been politically active.

School and university

His primary school was Szkoła Podstawowa nr 23 in Sosnowiec. After his death the school wrote on social media that a graduate, “Pan Łukasz Litewka,” had been killed, and recalled that he had later visited the school and helped it raise money and equipment. For secondary school he attended II Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Emilii Plater in Sosnowiec, named for Emilia Plater. The school’s Facebook account, in a post published on the day he died, called him an “absolwent Plater,” a graduate of the school.

He completed a bachelor’s degree in sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Silesia in Katowice. The university’s notice described him as a graduate of its sociology programme, and a Sejm communiqué of 23 April 2026 said that he had finished sociological studies at that faculty. TVN24 specified that the qualification was a licencjat, the standard Polish bachelor’s degree; the parliamentary register lists his education as higher and his profession as sociologist. RMF24 likewise reported sociology studies at the university in Katowice.

TVN24’s profile placed his first job after that degree as assistant to Kazimierz Karolczak of the Democratic Left Alliance, identified there as deputy marshal of the Silesian regional assembly. The same account said that Łukasz Komoniewski, then mayor of Będzin and also from the Alliance, later offered him a specialist post at the city’s municipal housing enterprise, Miejski Zakład Budynków Mieszkalnych. In 2018 Dariusz Wójtowicz, mayor of Mysłowice, hired him for municipal companies in that city. A corrected asset declaration for 2022, reported by Wirtualna Polska, listed him as a senior marketing specialist at Zakład Oczyszczania Miasta Mysłowice, with 51,866 zł in income that year, and as a marketing specialist at Hospital No. 2 in Mysłowice, with 17,580 zł. He told TVN24 that the company work was public relations and marketing, including environmental campaigns aimed at children, and that in the year before the 2023 parliamentary election he took similar work in the office of Włodzimierz Czarzasty, then a deputy marshal of the Sejm. The corrected declaration put the 2022 income from that office at 11,472 zł. The Mysłowice posts and the work for Czarzasty ran alongside his seat on the Sosnowiec city council, to which he was first elected in 2014.

Local government in Sosnowiec

The 2014 and 2018 council elections

Łukasz Litewka sat on the City Council of Sosnowiec from the 2014 local elections until 18 October 2023, when the mandate expired because he had been elected to the Sejm. Both times he was returned in district no. 4, covering Zagórze and part of Klimontów, on the SLD Lewica Razem list, organized around the Democratic Left Alliance.

In 2014 the council had 28 members. SLD Lewica Razem took 14,335 votes and seven seats, behind Civic Platform (16,497 votes, 10 seats) and ahead of Law and Justice (13,020 votes, five seats) and Niezależni dla Sosnowca (12,486 votes, six seats); turnout was 37.73 percent. In district 4 the SLD list's 3,533 votes led every other committee. Litewka, fifth on the list, received 941 votes, 7.40 percent of the district vote, and was elected with Halina Sobańska; the largest personal total was Tadeusz Sokołowski of Law and Justice, with 1,277. Reporting on the council's first organization of its business called him its youngest member.

In 2018 he led the same list. The National Electoral Commission recorded 2,846 votes — 15.94 percent of the district vote and 64.23 percent of his list's 4,431 — and a seat; the file gave his age as 29. District 4 (34,661 voters, five seats) also returned Wanda Olko and Damian Żurawski of the Civic Coalition, Sokołowski, and Kamil Wnuk of Wspólnie dla Sosnowca. Citywide SLD Lewica Razem and Law and Justice took five seats each, the Civic Coalition 11 and Wspólnie dla Sosnowca four, on a council of 25, three fewer than before because the city had fallen below 200,000 inhabitants. The five-year term began on 22 November 2018 with the oath. The electoral commissioner in Katowice III later ruled that the mandate, from list no. 5 in district 4, expired on 18 October 2023 on election to the Sejm, which cannot be combined with a council seat.

Council work and the citizen budget

On 5 December 2014 the SLD councillor Kazimierz Górski proposed Litewka to chair the Audit Commission. Tomasz Mędrzak of Law and Justice won the chair, 18 votes to seven against, while Litewka had nine in favour and 14 against. Mateusz Rykała of Civic Platform then nominated him as deputy chair, and that vote passed 24–0 with one abstention. The city's report on 2018 listed him, early in the next term, as deputy to Wanda Olko on the Budget Commission, which opinions the municipal budget, the multiannual financial forecast, long-term borrowing and financial management. He was not on the four-person presidium.

In July 2020, described in the local press as a councillor of the Left, he wrote an open letter to mayor Arkadiusz Chęciński about a bus lane opened on 1 July on Braci Mieroszewskich and 11 Listopada streets in Zagórze. He called it the mayor's worst decision, asked for demand-actuated lights where he said pedestrian crashes had occurred, cited a petition of nearly 2,200 signatures, and asked that the lane be reconsidered.

The dispute that left the council chamber concerned the participatory budget, run since 2014, when 5 million złoty was set aside for resident-chosen projects; 20,774 people voted in 2017. Spokesman Rafał Łysy said the electronic system recorded an anomalous surge for one proposal, a playground in Zagórze, while residents were told they had already voted. Officials notified prosecutors, and the mayor informed the council. In November 2018 the Sosnowiec-South prosecutor's office charged Litewka with unauthorized processing of personal data and with exceeding a public official's powers to the detriment of an institution or private persons, treated as one act and punishable by up to two years. District prosecutor Magdalena Ziobro called that classification preliminary. Litewka said he was surprised: with friends he had canvassed with a tablet, he had gained nothing personally, and residents had consented so a playground could be built. He called publication around the swearing-in no accident. Another account said the allegation covered data of about 300 people and that the project lost and was not built. The file stayed with prosecutors into the new term; the later court case is separate from this council dispute.

Social activism and fundraising

Collections for treatment, animals and local needs

From about 2020, while a councillor in Sosnowiec, Łukasz Litewka ran rapid public collections, chiefly on Zrzutka.pl and through a Facebook audience later known as #TeamLitewka. Appeals covered medical treatment, equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland, people in immediate hardship, and animals.

His first Zrzutka.pl account, opened in April 2020 and later deleted but still visible in web archives, began with a ventilator for residents of the Dąbrowa Basin. The description named no hospital; after a report, the platform briefly held payments until one was added. Tygodnik Powszechny reported that donors gave 55,000 zł and that 49,248 zł reached the hospital named at the end, although Zrzutka.pl charges organizers no commission.

Larger medical drives often amplified collections already open elsewhere. In late January 2023 he publicized the SiePomaga.pl appeal for four-year-old Iga Czekalska, who had type 1 spinal muscular atrophy. Local reporting put unreimbursed gene therapy near 10 million zł, with a 13.5 kg limit. The family had a little over 3.5 million zł; within about a week the reported total rose by more than 1.5 million zł, to 5.3 million zł by 7 February. In November 2023, days after his election to the Sejm, a post on a profile Gazeta Krakowska put at about 278,000 followers backed an appeal for five-year-old Ania from Kraków, whose family sought about 1 million zł for brain-tumour treatment in Switzerland. The paper reported that the collection passed its target, to about 120 percent, within a few hours.

In December 2024 Anna Golus, in Tygodnik Powszechny, examined appeals still open to payment. They included more than 57,000 zł in two days for a woman who had asked to borrow 100 zł; more than 17,000 zł for an older woman, of which 500 zł was paid over and 15,000 zł later moved to another collection after she did not stop begging; a wheelchair priced at 8,500 zł that passed 100,000 zł; and more than 730,000 zł in August for a teenager presented as homeless. Onet reported that he was not, and the children's rights commissioner asked a family court to look into his situation. Litewka said the case had been checked; he often did not answer where surpluses went. The profile then had nearly 400,000 followers.

The #TeamLitewka foundation

In June 2023 Litewka founded the #TeamLitewka foundation and was its president. Its regulations allowed a charge, stated as 10 percent, for the account and bookkeeping, with the exact sum set case by case. Golus reported that Anna Szwinge, for whom it collected 635,000 zł of a planned roughly 1.1 million zł, wrote that a commission was taken, while Jerzy Gara said more than 373,000 zł raised after flooding for a hedgehog centre in Kłodzko reached Fundacja Primum in full. An unsigned reply said funds were being settled according to purpose and that part supported statutory work, an office and one employee. Litewka also said a BLIK appeal for flood dehumidifiers brought in more than 100,000 zł within hours, a sum not shown on Zrzutka.pl.

The largest project was Zwierzogranie, which Sosnowiec co-organized as a national event in the manner of the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity, for animal homelessness, sterilization and education. It opened on 14 February 2025. Litewka presented Zwierzobus as a 14-metre vehicle for sterilization, vaccination, microchipping and diagnostics; by 9 March more than 630,000 zł was showing on Zrzutka.pl. Late that February the National Chamber of Veterinary Medicine told him and the platform that treating animals in the bus, rather than at a veterinary establishment or on call, was contrary to law, and demanded that the collection be removed. Paweł Cyz of the foundation told Gazeta Wyborcza that veterinarians had been consulted first. On 25 March Noizz reported that he had narrowed the plan: the bus would mainly visit schools, and sterilization would be paid for in existing clinics.

The finale was on 18 May 2025 at ArcelorMittal Park. In mid-May the city said more than 1 million zł had been collected. Zrzutka.pl later reported 1,921,401 zł from 48,954 payments, plus 171 auction offers and 108 side moneyboxes, and still described both a mobile aid bus and sterilization funding. After his death in April 2026, control of the foundation was disputed among relatives and board members, separately from the inquiry.

Prosecutorial review of the collections

In May 2023 the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Sosnowiec opened an ex officio inquiry, led by the municipal police economic-crime unit, into whether donors in 2020–2023 had been misled about the purpose of Zrzutka.pl collections, the suspected offence of causing many people to part with money to their disadvantage. Spokeswoman Dorota Pelon confirmed that scope to Tygodnik Powszechny in December 2024, while the case was open. Litewka was questioned as a witness. He wrote that he learned of it from beneficiaries, and he had suggested that the timing, as he announced a New Left candidacy, might be political.

The published sums do not cover the same appeals. Golus counted, from 2020, more than 80 Zrzutka.pl collections and more than 4.7 million zł, plus BLIK amounts that were not public. On 20 February 2026 Ślązag reported that the inquiry, by then discontinued, had examined 54 collections from 2020–2023 supported by more than 4.7 million zł—52 opened by Litewka and two by the foundation—and that prosecutors found no elements of an offence. The same day he wrote that recipients had received the money, that he did not blame the state for checking, and that he regretted the questioning of parents whose children had been helped.

Path to the Sejm

The 2019 candidacy

Litewka first stood for the Sejm at the 2019 Polish parliamentary election on 13 October 2019, in constituency no. 32. The district covers Sosnowiec, Dąbrowa Górnicza, Jaworzno and the counties of Będzin and Zawiercie, in the Silesian Voivodeship, and elects nine deputies. He was fifth on list no. 3 of the electoral committee of the Democratic Left Alliance (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej, SLD), the name under which the Left appeared on the ballot. The National Electoral Commission (Państwowa Komisja Wyborcza, PKW) recorded him as a sociologist from Sosnowiec who did not belong to a political party.

Of 335,431 valid votes, the SLD list received 73,466, or 21.90 percent, and two seats. The seats went to the two candidates with the most votes on the list: Włodzimierz Czarzasty, placed first, with 31,244, and Rafał Adamczyk, placed second, with 12,148. Litewka was third on that list, with 11,733 votes, 3.50 percent of the constituency and 415 behind Adamczyk, and was not elected. His votes were concentrated in Sosnowiec (7,780), with 2,483 in Dąbrowa Górnicza, 1,019 in Będzin County, 267 in Jaworzno and 184 in Zawiercie County. Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) led the district with 124,553 votes and four seats, and the Civic Coalition took 99,499 votes and three; PiS's leading candidate, Ewa Malik, received 46,773. Before the next election Litewka told Interia that about 400 votes had kept him out in 2019 and that he regarded the result as respectable.

The 2023 campaign and result

He stood again on 15 October at the 2023 Polish parliamentary election, for the New Left (Nowa Lewica) in the same constituency. PKW listed him 18th, and last, on list no. 3 of Komitet Wyborczy Nowa Lewica, and recorded him as a member of that party. Czarzasty, described during the campaign as the formation's leader and a deputy marshal of the Sejm, was first on the list; Adamczyk, a deputy from Będzin, was second.

The outdoor campaign was built around those banners. In an interview published by Interia on 12 September 2023, Litewka said he had placed photographs of dogs that had waited years in a shelter on the posters beside his name, together with a caretaker's telephone number, and that on the banner he himself was only an addition. He also said he issued no paper leaflets and spent the equivalent of a large leaflet print run on fruit and vegetables for a children's home in the region, bought at a market in Dąbrowa Górnicza, and that residents were offering fences and gates for the banners. He told Interia he was not treating the last place as that of a likely winner. Rzeczpospolita later wrote that the campaign became known for billboards showing shelter dogs awaiting adoption.

The New Left list received 81,646 votes, 21.60 percent of 377,959 valid votes, and again two seats, finishing third behind the Civic Coalition (114,519 votes, 30.30 percent, three seats) and PiS (112,389 votes, 29.74 percent, three). The Third Way took the remaining seat, through Kamil Wnuk with 16,310 votes. On the New Left list the two seats went to the candidates with the most personal votes: Litewka received 40,579, 10.74 percent of the constituency and just under half of his list, and Czarzasty 22,332, while Adamczyk, second on the list with 5,900, was not elected. Litewka's total was the highest of any candidate in the district, 1,081 ahead of Malik of PiS (39,498) and ahead of Barbara Dolniak (37,470) and Wojciech Saługa (28,781) of the Civic Coalition. The Sejm register for the 10th-term Sejm names the district Katowice and records the same 40,579 votes. Onet described the result in the Sosnowiec constituency as one of the largest surprises of the election: a local councillor from the bottom of the list had nearly twice the vote of the list leader, and both entered parliament because the list, as in 2019, had won two seats.

Parliamentary work

Oath, club and committees

Łukasz Karol Litewka sat in the Sejm of the 10th term from its opening until his death. The register lists him as a sociologist, elected in constituency no. 32, Katowice, in the Silesian Voivodeship, with 40,579 votes. His oath is dated 13 November 2023, and the mandate is marked inactive from 23 April 2026, with death given as the cause. That day he gave the pledge and added “Tak mi dopomóż Bóg” (“So help me God”), the sentence Article 104 of the Constitution of Poland allows a deputy to attach. He was the only member of the Lewica club to use it; the rest of the club stopped at “Ślubuję”. He remained in that club for the whole mandate.

On 21 November 2023 the Sejm placed him on the Social Policy and Family Committee and the Agriculture and Rural Development Committee. A motion of 19 December 2023 added him to the Local Government and Regional Policy Committee. The next day he was recalled from the social-policy committee and elected to the European Union Affairs Committee; at that committee’s sitting Agnieszka Pomaska nominated him as a deputy chair, and he was chosen, with Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk, by 34 votes to none. Resolutions setting a new membership of the EU committee, on 6 November 2024 and 26 February 2026, included him again. Sittings that adjusted the presidium, in July 2024 and May 2025, do not record his removal. On 18 October 2024 the Sejm created an extraordinary committee on animal protection and named him among its 17 members; the resolution passed by 388 votes to 28, with 9 abstentions. At its first sitting, on 5 December 2024, Dorota Niedziela became chair and Litewka a deputy chair, with Ewa Szymanowska, Krzysztof Ciecióra and Jarosław Rzepa, by 15 votes to none. He stayed on the agriculture, local-government, EU and animal-protection committees until the mandate ended. A June 2025 account in Radio ESKA still described him as deputy chair of the EU and animal-protection committees and as a member of the other two.

Bills, questions and animal welfare

The register shows 20 numbered interpellations and three written questions. The questions, in January, May and November 2025, concerned the Sosnowiec Maczki and Sosnowiec Główny stations and passenger information at Katowice station. The interpellations, from October 2024 to March 2026, went to ministers for health, agriculture, climate, justice, defence, science, state assets and energy. They covered drug reimbursement for spinal muscular atrophy, the government in-vitro programme, a haemophilia drug and the public hospital no. 2 in Mysłowice; leases of state agricultural land and the future of agricultural production centres; a children’s assistance centre in Sosnowiec; damage at the Natura 2000 site Kuźnica Warężyńska; and the sales policy and planned sale of energy assets of JSW Koks. Radio ESKA, using the record as of 14 May 2025, reported that his first floor statement, on 19 December 2023, called Poland a country of online collections and asked Prime Minister Donald Tusk to reimburse treatment for spinal muscular atrophy, and that agriculture was the subject he raised most often.

Several questions, and the bills he signed, concerned animals. On 16 October 2024 he asked the agriculture minister about live animals sent by Polish Post, called the practice disgraceful, and asked whether a total ban on transporting live animals was under discussion. Other interpellations dealt with horse-drawn transport to Morskie Oko and a test of a replacement vehicle there, consent to shoot three brown bears in the Bieszczady, and a cooperation agreement between the Ministry of National Defence and the Polish Hunting Association. On 20 January 2026 deputies including Litewka introduced a bill to amend the Animal Protection Act. It would have banned keeping dogs tethered, with exceptions for a leash, transport, shows, veterinary care and short or necessary restraint, and it set minimum kennel standards. Piekarska, Szymanowska, Rzepa and Litewka were authorized to represent the sponsors. The bill went to the animal-protection committee on 25 February 2026. Its committee first reading was on 12 May 2026, after his death; the Sejm passed it on 29 May by 381 votes to 28, with 5 abstentions, and the president signed it on 24 July.

Wprost reported that he and the singer Dorota Rabczewska, known as Doda, had publicized conditions in private shelters, including sites in Sobolew and Bytom. On 3 February 2026 President Karol Nawrocki and First Lady Marta Nawrocka received Rabczewska, the journalist Krzysztof Stanowski and Litewka at the Presidential Palace. The Chancellery, quoted by Wprost, said the meeting answered reports about those shelters and that the demands raised included higher penalties for cruelty and removing the right to keep animals from people guilty of it.

A government bill on a National Register of Marked Dogs and Cats reached the Sejm on 25 February 2026 and was sent the next day to the animal-protection committee. At the third reading on 17 April 2026 Litewka voted for the bill as a whole. It passed by 245 votes to 22, with 171 abstentions; the president signed it on 2 June 2026. On 23 April 2026 the register closed the mandate because of his death.

Political positions

Party membership

Łukasz Litewka came to the New Left (Nowa Lewica) through the Democratic Left Alliance (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej, SLD). He told Interia that he had been invited into the formation about a decade before entering the Sejm, that his Sosnowiec council service was "then still with the SLD," and that "later we changed the name to Nowa Lewica." Polsat News described him as twice elected a councillor from the SLD.

The rename was a merger, not a personal label. On 17 March 2021 Włodzimierz Czarzasty and Robert Biedroń announced a court-approved statute that changed the SLD's name to Nowa Lewica, as the first step toward uniting with Biedroń's Spring (Wiosna). The parties joined at a Warsaw congress on 9 October 2021. The 10th-term Sejm register listed Litewka in the club of The Left (Lewica), with the oath on 13 November 2023 and the mandate ending at his death on 23 April 2026.

Points of difference inside the Left

Before the Sejm sat, Gazeta Wyborcza asked whether he would support abortion to the 12th week. He answered: "Only in justified cases, for example when it threatens the life and health of women. Future mothers cannot be afraid of becoming pregnant." The Left had sought abortion on request to 12 weeks. Katarzyna Kotula told Polsat News that he might "not know the reality of abortion." On 8 November 2023 he wrote that he rejected Law and Justice and the 2020 tightening, that fetal anomaly and rape had been omitted, and that those cases "should not be limited by time." He also wanted a referendum of women, which critics linked to the Third Way, and said he was not leaving. On 13 November he still signed both club bills: one partly decriminalising abortion with the woman's consent up to 12 weeks, and one stating a right to termination through the end of the 12th week. He later told Interia that the line had been misunderstood, that both signatures were his position, and that "abortion does not bother me at all," though women rather than a man should speak.

Article 104 of the Constitution of Poland lets an MP add "Tak mi dopomóż Bóg" ("So help me God"). On 13 November 2023 he was the only Left MP to use it. He had written that he believed in God, would not apologise, and that everyone in the Left may believe as they choose, while he wanted a secular state and would not confuse faith in God with faith in the Church. Krzysztof Śmiszek wrote that the Sejm should omit the sentence to separate state from religion; Litewka swore 17 minutes later. Sieci quoted an unnamed colleague that the club had wanted one formula and that Litewka cited a promise to his grandfather; spokesman Marek Kacprzak told Interia there was no such rule and that the club leader had known.

He told Interia the mandate should serve animals and give the State Labour Inspectorate more power over maintenance debtors working off the books. He had also said he would not "sit in the fifth row and vote as he is told." A March 2021 image calling recipients of Law and Justice transfers "patusi" was treated as doubt about social spending; he said he had not written it, and Kacprzak said the test was votes and bills.

Criminal cases before parliament

The citizen-budget case

In the 2017 electronic vote on Sosnowiec’s participatory budget, the municipal system recorded a sudden surge of votes from a single IP address for a playground in the Zagórze district. Residents said they could not vote because the system showed they already had, the city notified prosecutors, and the mayor told the council.

In November 2018 the Sosnowiec-South District Prosecutor’s Office, headed by Magdalena Ziobro, turned the inquiry into a case against Litewka, a Zagórze councillor. He was charged with unauthorized processing of personal data and with a public official’s exceeding of his powers to the detriment of an institution or private persons—one course of conduct, Ziobro said, under two provisions, punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment. A search had secured material. The city spokesman, Rafał Łysy, put the data at about 300 people; later accounts put the disputed votes at about 280 and said they included national identification (PESEL) numbers.

Litewka said the charge surprised him. He told Dziennik Zachodni, and repeated on social media, that he and acquaintances had canvassed blocks of flats with tablets, that residents often supplied a relative’s details and asked him to enter the vote, and that this was common among active project authors helping older people with an electronic ballot. He said the data were given with consent, that he took no private benefit, and that announcing the case as a new council term began was not accidental. As of November 2018 the playground proposal had lost and was not to be built.

On 10 May 2019 the office filed an indictment at the District Court in Sosnowiec. Ziobro said it contained 280 counts, including exceeding powers to a private person’s detriment, concealing documents and using personal data without consent, and invited injured parties to join as auxiliary prosecutors. Marcin Stolpa, a later head of the office, told TVN24 that the indictment alleged Article 107(1) of the Personal Data Protection Act and Article 231 § 1 of the Criminal Code. In 2023 Litewka said a playground had been built, that the case had cost him two years of stress and a fine, and that investigators had taken him from home at dawn in handcuffs—a painful but useful lesson, he said, in how the residents’ goal was reached.

The support-list data case

About a year later the same office brought a further accusation. Stolpa said it concerned photocopies of support lists for candidates to the Sejm in the 2015 election, and the signatories’ data, under Article 107(2) of the data-protection act, Article 276 of the Criminal Code and Article 248 point 3. Those Code provisions cover concealing a document one may not exclusively dispose of, and damaging, concealing, altering or forging election documents. Litewka said the cases were linked: the flat search had turned up a paper he should not have had. The May 2019 account had already listed concealment of documents among the 280 counts, so the reports do not fully separate the charging instruments.

Stolpa said both cases ended in convictions, in June 2021 and January 2022, each a fine that did not bar election or service as a councillor or deputy. He did not give the amounts, case numbers or say whether either judgment was appealed. In 2024 Tygodnik Powszechny reported that the District Court in Sosnowiec refused to release the texts on privacy grounds; a second-instance court set that refusal aside and sent the request back. The cases were separate from a 2024 prosecutorial review of fundraising Litewka had organized.

Death and the traffic investigation

The collision

Łukasz Karol Litewka, a 36-year-old member of the Sejm elected for the New Left within The Left, was killed on 23 April 2026 while riding a bicycle on ul. Kazimierzowska in Dąbrowa Górnicza. The Chancellery of the Sejm announced the death that evening. His mandate expired on the date of death: the Sejm register records the cause as death (inactiveCause “Zgon”) and the expiry date as 23 April 2026.

Prosecutors later fixed the impact at 13:14. A Mitsubishi Colt driven by a 57-year-old resident of Sosnowiec, travelling in the opposite direction, left its lane and struck him. The street runs through woodland between Strzemieszyce in Dąbrowa Górnicza and the Kazimierz Górniczy district of Sosnowiec. An early police account was that the driver may have fainted or fallen asleep; the Silesian police said nothing then indicated that the collision had been deliberate.

From 13:07 until the impact Litewka was on a telephone call, using an earpiece rather than holding the handset. The person on the line said his voice suddenly disappeared, which investigators took as the moment of the crash, and monitoring from shortly beforehand showed the earpiece in place and no phone in his hand. The prosecution said that was not a breach of the rules for cyclists, and a blood test showed that he had not been drinking. He was not wearing a helmet: rejecting a circulating image of a helmeted cyclist, spokesman Bartosz Kilian said the victim had not had one. People who reached the scene began resuscitation, and medics who arrived could not revive him. The emergency call went in at 13:17 from the driver’s phone, placed by a witness because the 57-year-old could not use the device effectively. No one who claimed to have seen the impact itself had come forward.

A full autopsy opinion, which Kilian described to the Polish Press Agency in late May, confirmed how he died: injury to a leg, rupture of major arteries and a massive haemorrhage.

The criminal investigation

The case was investigated by the District Prosecutor’s Office in Dąbrowa Górnicza, with public comment from Kilian at the Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Sosnowiec. On 24 April the driver was charged under Article 177 § 2 of the Criminal Code with unintentionally breaking a traffic rule and unintentionally causing Litewka’s death, punishable by six months to eight years’ imprisonment. He admitted the act, but Kilian said parts of his account were doubtful: he moved between loss of consciousness, a moment of distraction and a complete gap in memory, and some of those statements could be only a line of defence. Defence counsel Dariusz Kawalec later said his client did not dispute what had happened but remembered nothing until he came to on the roadside. Doctors found him fit to be questioned and charged, while ordering further tests, and a breath test at the scene detected no alcohol. An expert found the Colt technically sound, including steering and brakes; there were no braking marks, and a preliminary view that the speed limit had not been exceeded was left for specialist checks. His phone, secured at the scene, was examined for use immediately before the impact.

On 25 April the District Court in Dąbrowa Górnicza ordered three months’ detention, convertible, if 40,000 zł was posted as a property surety, into police supervision and a ban on leaving the country. Prosecutors had sought detention because of the possible sentence and a feared risk of obstruction. The surety was posted and he left custody on 28 April. On 27 April the prosecutor appealed, arguing that only unconditional detention could secure an investigation still gathering evidence.

On 12 May 2026 the Regional Court in Sosnowiec, at a closed hearing, rejected that appeal. It kept the release in force, cancelled police supervision and the travel ban, ordered the passport returned and the 40,000 zł refunded, and held that no preventive measure was justified. The decision was final.

Further reports did not change the charge. On 29 May Kilian told PAP that toxicology had found no substance capable of affecting the driver’s perception or motor ability, and that his phone had not been in use at the moment of the collision; Litewka’s phone was still being examined. A reconstruction opinion, involving several specialties including medicine and covering the road surface, signs and traffic layout, remained outstanding, and in May the inquiry was expected to run into the autumn. On 8 September Kilian said the experts had requested more documents, taken further measurements and returned to the scene, so the opinion was then expected at the beginning of October; if neither the defence nor other parties challenged it, a concluding decision would follow. As of 1 October 2026 the prosecutor’s office had not announced that the opinion had been filed, and neither an indictment nor a discontinuance had been reported.

Funeral, honors and succession

Funeral and decorations

A state funeral was held in Sosnowiec on 29 April 2026, organized by the Chancellery of the Sejm because Litewka had held a parliamentary mandate. It began at 13:30 with a Mass at the parish church of St Joachim, led by Artur Ważny, bishop of Sosnowiec. The coffin was covered with the national flag. A procession then went to the parish cemetery on ul. Zuzanny.

Mourners attend the funeral of Łukasz Litewka at the Church of St Joachim in Sosnowiec.

The family asked that the Mass and burial be closed to the media, and that people make "any gesture of kindness" — support for people in need, charities and animal shelters — instead of sending flowers. Crowds stood outside; applause was reported as the coffin was carried in.

President Karol Nawrocki and Marta Nawrocka, Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Marshal Włodzimierz Czarzasty attended, with other figures from The Left. Before the Mass, Nawrocki gave Litewka's father, Zdzisław Litewka, the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, conferred on 27 April for outstanding merits in public and social activity. A request had reached the presidential chancellery on 24 April from several dozen animal-protection organizations. On 25 April the Chapter of the Honorary Badge for Merits to the Silesian Voivodeship unanimously awarded the Gold Honorary Badge.

On 28 April Czarzasty asked the Sejm for a minute of silence; MPs were also reported to have prayed for the dead. Votes due on 29 April were moved to 28 April so members could attend. On 29 April he ordered the parliamentary flags, including the one over the plenary dome, to half-mast. Sosnowiec city hall lowered its flags and opened a condolence book.

The Sejm seat and public memorials

The Sejm register records that the mandate expired on 23 April 2026 because of his death. Under Article 251 § 5 of the Electoral Code, a vacancy passes to the candidate on the same list with the next highest vote who accepts it. In constituency no. 32, Rafał Adamczyk was next on the New Left list after the two candidates elected in 2023. With 5,900 votes, behind Litewka's 40,579 and Czarzasty's 22,332, he declined in order to remain on the Silesian Voivodeship board.

A decision of Marshal Czarzasty of 13 May 2026, published as Monitor Polski 2026, item 465, seated Bożena Ewa Borowiec, the next candidate on list no. 3, who had received 4,937 votes. Born on 10 July 1968 in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, she had been deputy mayor of Dąbrowa Górnicza and, from 2024, deputy president of the State Fund for the Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons. She took the oath on the morning of 15 May 2026 and joined the Left club.

On 27 August 2026 the Sosnowiec council unanimously named a park under construction on ul. Białostocka, in Zagórze, after Litewka. Mayor Arkadiusz Chęciński said the parents had been consulted and supported the choice. The site covers about 3.7 hectares between ul. Białostocka and ul. Lenartowicza.

Foundations after his death

Fundacja #TeamLitewka split after the death. Litewka had been founder and sole management-board member; Fakt reported that the council then took direction and that Paweł Cyz became president. On 14 May Marcin Podsiadło replaced Mateusz Michel as chair. The council backed a monument the parents and brother opposed and offered the family only an honorary role; they left the meeting.

A resolution of 19 May named Zdzisław Litewka, Barbara Litewka and their son Mateusz to an honorary council. Podsiadło said the family had not been refused a place, that Mateusz had also been offered a board seat, and that an audit was planned because of public questions. In a late-May statement the family wrote that they had wanted a real say in order to protect Litewka's legacy, that some council members were pressing contrary ideas, and that posts about the foundation on his profile would stop until the dispute was clarified. His partner, Natalia Bacławska, published a separate statement.

On 9 July 2026 the family and long-standing collaborators announced Fundacja im. Łukasza Litewki, saying they were starting again in law and organization so the charitable work could continue, without replacing him or speaking in his name. #TeamLitewka continued under the existing council. The monument stayed in dispute. On 27 May Maciej Adamiec, president of the Hutnik housing cooperative in Sosnowiec, announced a civic committee to build one and said the foundation had consented. Fakt reported that Podsiadło, a cooperative vice-president, and Oskar Rojek, its plenipotentiary, sat on the council, and that the parents and brother had opposed the plan in person and through a law firm in Zabrze.