Alexandru Ionita’s smile, a tattoo on one of his hands that says “hard bass”, the style of music he was passionate about, and a photograph in his room give hints of the young man he was. He loved electronic music, dreamed of earning some money to return to his native Romania, and his family describes him as a cheerful and lively boy. On the morning of July 25, 2021, he suffered a brutal beating in a park in Amorebieta (Bizkaia) in which 16 young people linked to a gang participated. All against him. The Alex they all knew disappeared that night, and since then he has been fighting to recover from the very serious injuries he was left with.
The brutal events that changed the life of Alexandru and his family will be judged from this Monday in Bilbao. In reality, this is the second trial for the brutal beating, since a year ago seven minors were sentenced to spend between three and six years in prison, as well as an eighth, with an indirect participation in the events, to three years of freedom guarded The eight adults who allegedly participated in the cruel assault and recorded it are now on trial.
The lawyer of the Ionita family claims “revisable permanent prison”. “Even if it is an attempted murder, they belong to a criminal group and we want an exemplary punishment for the brutality of the events and their dissemination through a video that was uploaded to the networks”, says Mariana Tulbure. The Prosecutor’s Office, meanwhile, claims attempted murder.
The holding of the trial, which could be extended for ten days, has broken the routine of the Ionita family, focused on fighting for a complicated partial recovery of Alexandru, who is between Bilbao and a rehabilitation clinic in Barcelona every week. The story of this family struggle in search of small progress is surprising. In the weeks following the beating, with Alexandru in a coma, the doctors did not give the Ionita family any hope. They saw it as unlikely that it would survive, and if it did, it would be in a vegetative state, they pointed out.
Since then, however, several people have crossed paths that have encouraged the hopes of this family. First it was Leon Danaila, a prestigious Romanian neurosurgeon who offered them another perspective. “My mother’s heart felt that she could not accept that first diagnosis. I was hoping that she could recover, and Dr. Danaila invited us not to lose her and to try to follow her recovery rhythms”, points out Ana Claudia. Mother of four more children, from that moment she understood that her life had to be focused on accompanying Alexandru, who is now 25 years old.
He did it, first, in a room in the hospital in Cruces, with Alexandru lying in a bed, and then in the sanatorium in Gorliz, on the banks of the Cantabrian. The story of the young man, however, changed when he arrived in the Mediterranean and shook Roxana, a woman resident in Ibiza and mother of two girls in their twenties.
He contacted the Ionita family and offered to cover the costs of the best possible rehabilitation for his recovery. She has become “the young man’s second mother”, in the words of Ana Claudia, and participated in the progress at the private clinic in Barcelona. “We are always in contact”, says Ana Claudia.
Alexandru’s mother gets emotional when she talks about Roxanai, reclining on Alexandru, showing the young man’s progress. He is able to pronounce some words, with great difficulty, and offer feedback to his mother’s interpellations. “He tells me when he’s hungry or thirsty, and he can move with the help of a walker,” he explains. Ana Claudia points out that “he is fine” and shows hope that “he will recover, even if he is not 100%”. The situation, in any case, is an absolute drama.
Once again in Bilbao, the family is counting the days for this second trial. The mother is considering testifying with or without a screen to face, face to face, the defendants who savagely beat her son two and a half years ago, when he was with a friend in a park. They had robbed and beaten other boys before, but Alex took the brunt of it. Linked to the Los Hermanos Koalas gang, they kicked and punched him, poked him with sticks and bottles. And when he was on the ground, unconscious, they emptied his pockets to rob him. They then uploaded the video on social media. From Monday they will have to account for this savagery.
