The Constanta Court of Appeal will decide on Tuesday whether the trial of Vlad Pascu, the author of the May 2 tragedy, will be moved to another court / At the first term, the judge from Mangalia searched the courtroom for the young man killed in the accident

The Constanţa Court of Appeal is expected to decide on Tuesday whether to accept the request of the prosecutors to move from the Mangalia Court the trial in which Vlad Pascu, the 19-year-old boy who, being drugged, drove into two groups of eight young people, at 2 May, and two students died. We remind you that at the first term of the trial, the magistrate judging this case asked if Sebastian Olariu, one of the young people killed in the accident, was in the room.

The request to relocate the trial was submitted by the Prosecutor’s Office of the Mangalia Court and was registered on March 19 before the Constanţa Court of Appeal.

On April 4, at the Mangalia Court, a new term is scheduled in the substantive trial in which Vlad Pascu is being tried.

“The judge asked where my son is”

The trial is being tried at the Mangalia Court by judge Ioana Ancuța Popoviciu. At the first term, when the adjournment was ordered, the judge asked if Sebastian Olariu, the boy killed in the accident, was also in the courtroom.

Sebastian Olariu’s father left the Mangalia Court crying, saying that the judge would have asked, in the courtroom, “where is Sebastian” and asked for the boy’s report: “I have never felt anything like this in my life, I have never seen such a judge. He wanted his bulletin (no – the bulletin of Sebastian Olariu, the boy who died in the accident)”.

The Judicial Inspection then announced that it had self-referred to the case of the judge.

The second court term took place on March 14. The father of the young woman killed in the accident caused by Vlad Pascu expressed his displeasure because Vlad Pascu was not brought to that deadline, intervening via video conference.

“Do you see Vlad Pascu brought here? Not. There is a gate to avoid being brought in, take advantage of it and that’s enough. If it were me, God forbid, in his place, they would take me by the back of the head, put handcuffs on me and bring me here to be judged. Discretionary,” he commented.

Adrian Cuculis, the lawyer of the parents of the two murdered young people, told HotNews.ro that Pascu was questioned for about 40 minutes via video conference and he admitted his actions.

Judge Ancuța Ioana Popoviciu admitted, at the request of Vlad Pascu’s lawyers, the simplified procedure for this trial, which would mean reducing the sentence by a third, the lawyer explained.

The parents of the victims requested, on the other hand, even before the start of the trial, to change the legal classification for Vlad Pascu from manslaughter to murder, a request that has not yet been debated.

Who is the magistrate who judges the trial of Vlad Pascu

According to her CV, Ancuța Ioana Popoviciu graduated in 2006 from the Faculty of Legal Sciences of the University of Oradea, then followed a master’s degree in Private Law. He became a judge in 2011, when he joined the Ineu Court (Arad County), where he worked until 2022. Since then, he has been a judge at the Mangalia Court.

In 2023, the judge was targeted by an action by the Judicial Inspection, being sanctioned with a warning by the Section for judges of the Superior Council of the Magistracy (CSM), wrote Ziua de Constanța.

The judge was sanctioned for “exercising the position with serious negligence”, more precisely for the violation of art. 271 letter s) thesis II referred to art. 272 paragraph (2) of the law on the status of judges and prosecutors:

• “exercise of the function with serious negligence” / “there is serious negligence when the judge or prosecutor culpably disregards, in a serious, undoubted and inexcusable way, the norms of substantive or procedural law”.

The accident took place on August 19, 2023, on DN 39, near the village of Vama Veche, after Vlad Pascu drove into a group of eight young people who were walking on the side of the road. Roberta Marina Dragomir (20 years old) and Sebastian Andrei Olariu (21 years old), both being students at the Faculty of Geography of the University of Bucharest, died on the spot. Three other youths were injured.

The tragedy of May 2 threw into a new scandal the Romanian Police, led (from May 2021) by the inspector general Benone Matei, under the direct authority of the quaestor Bogdan Despescu, secretary of state in the Ministry of the Interior.

The accident revealed shocking details. Vlad Pascu had been stopped by the police twice – the day before the tragedy, at a filter, and the same night. He was allowed to leave the police station without being drug tested even though drugs were found in his car and the car did not have valid RCA insurance. Less than an hour later, Vlad Pascu caused the accident.

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