Seven months since Vlad Pascu, the son of a millionaire, fatally hit two young people with his car in the 2 Mai resort, drugged while behind the wheel, only two policemen were sanctioned and only with the minimum punishment – a 20% reduction in salary, for three months.
This despite the fact that Pascu had been stopped by the police twice, so there were two situations in which the agents could prevent him from getting behind the wheel. If this had happened, young Roberta and Sebastian would be alive today.
These things emerge from the report carried out by the Control Body of the Minister of the Interior, after the tragedy.
Moreover, Minister Cătălin Predoiu (PNL) himself admitted that “he made a serious mistake in this case, the system failed”, and Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, PSD president, said that “by the way they acted, but also by the subsequent behavior , certain policemen have become moral accomplices in crime”.
If the policemen had done their job, “100% of the tragedy could have been avoided”, acknowledged the head of the Romanian Police, the quaestor Benone Matei.
The police had to prevent Vlad Pascu from getting behind the wheel. They didn’t
The day before the accident, on August 18, 2023, at 9:40 p.m., Vlad Pascu was stopped in traffic by the head of the Constanța Traffic Police, Chief Commissioner Constantin Stoian. It was supposed to prevent him from driving because he didn’t have an RCA policy.
Following the preliminary investigation, no sanction was ordered in the case of Constantin Stoian, according to the information provided by the IGPR. Stoian continued to work at IPJ Constanţa until the beginning of this year, when his request for retirement was approved, according to libertatea.ro
The next day, at 0:40, a man saw the car in traffic and called 112, reporting that the driver might be drunk or drugged.
The 112 operator from IPJ Constanța did not take into account all the information received from the applicant and did not take all the measures so that Pascu’s car was quickly detected in traffic. The 112 operator was disciplined with “a 20% reduction in the salary of the basic position, for a period of 3 months”.
Two hours after that call, at 2:35 a.m., Pascu’s car was accidentally stopped by a patrol made up of a platoon leader from the gendarmes and a police officer, who had been hired only ten months before and was seconded from Bucharest on the coast.
The policeman is accused, in the report of the Control Body, of “not picking up the registration plates” of the car, which still did not have an RCA policy. Furthermore, the agent and the gendarme found in the door next to the driver’s seat a joint and a foil with four Bromazepam pills – a sedative classified as a dangerous drug.
The agent took Vlad Pascu to the police headquarters in Vama Veche, with the intention of testing him for both drugs and alcohol. The breathalyzer showed that he had not consumed alcohol.
Instead, in order to test Vlad Pascu for drug consumption, the coordinating officer asked for support from the Mangalia Police, only that in the entire southern coast, in the middle of the summer season, there was only one DrugTest, at the Mangalia Traffic Police, and the employee trained to use it was on medical leave.
The internal procedures provide that, when a driver cannot be tested for drugs, regardless of the reason, the policeman is obliged to take him to a medical unit, for the collection of biological samples, the same source states.
According to the information provided by the IGPR, the head of the Mangalia Police, Chief Superintendent Dragoș Cristea, was sanctioned with “a 20% reduction in the salary of the basic position for a period of 3 months”. After the accident, he resigned from the head of the Mangalia Police and returned to the post of Deputy Chief of the Mangalia Police, a position he still holds today.
This is how Vlad Pascu got behind the wheel again and, in less than an hour, hit five young people with his car, killing two of them. He was then caught in the Old Customs and only then was he tested for drugs. He tested positive for cocaine, amphetamines, methamphetamines and ecstasy.
The head of IPJ Constanța since then did not receive any sanction
According to the IGPR data, the head of IPJ Constanta, the quaestor Adrian Glugă, did not receive any sanction.
IGPR says that Adrian Glugă still works in the police and that he “was made available to the unit”, as a result of his voluntary resignation from the position of chief inspector. IPJ Constanţa communicated, five days after receiving the journalists’ request, that it “needs documentation” to say whether Adrian Glugă still works there or not.
