Alexandru Ionita's smile, a tattoo on one of his hands that reads “hard bass”, the style of music he was passionate about, and a photograph in his room give clues to the young man he was. He loved electronic music, he dreamed of earning some money to return to his native Romania and his family describes him as a happy and vital boy. In the early 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 that everyone knew disappeared that night, and since then he has been fighting to recover from the very serious injuries he suffered.
The brutal events that changed the lives of Alexandru and his family will be tried starting this Monday in Bilbao. In reality, this is the second trial for the brutal beating, since a year ago seven minors were sentenced to between 3 and 6 years of confinement, as well as an eighth, with an indirect participation in the events, to three years of supervised freedom. . Now, the eight adults who allegedly participated in the cruel attack and recorded it are being tried.
The Ionita family lawyer demands “permanent reviewable prison.” “Even though 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,” indicates Mariana Tulbure. The Prosecutor's Office, meanwhile, claims attempted murder.
The holding of the trial, which could be extended by 10 days, has broken the routine of the Ionita family, focused on fighting for Alexandru's complicated partial recovery that they fight every week between Bilbao and a rehabilitation clinic in Barcelona. The story of this family struggle in search of small progress is amazing. In the weeks after the beating, with Alexandru in a coma, doctors gave the Ionita family no hope. They saw it as unlikely that he would survive and, if he did, he would do so in a vegetative state, as they pointed out.
Since then, however, several people have come across who 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. She had the hope that she could recover, and Dr. Danaila invited us not to lose her and to try to follow the pace of her recovery,” says Ana Claudia. Mother of four other children, from that moment on she understood that her life should be focused on accompanying Alexandru, who is now 25 years old.
He did it, first, in a room at the Cruces hospital, with Alexandru bedridden, and then in the Gorliz sanatorium, on the shores of the Cantabrian Sea. The young man's story, however, changed when he reached the Mediterranean and shocked Roxana, a woman living in Ibiza and mother of two twenty-year-olds.
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 she is a participant in her progress in the private clinic in Barcelona. “We are always in contact,” says Ana Claudia.
Alexandru's mother becomes emotional when talking about Roxana and, lying on Alexandru, shows the young man's progress. She is able to pronounce some words, with many difficulties, and offer feedback to her mother's questions. “She tells me when she is hungry or thirsty, and she can get around with the help of a walker,” she explains. Ana Claudia points out that she “is fine” and shows hope that he “will recover, even if it is not 100%.” The situation, in any case, is an absolute drama.
Back in Bilbao, the family is counting the days until this second trial. The mother is considering testifying with a screen or doing so without it to face, face to face, the accused who two and a half years ago savagely beat her son, when she was with a friend in a park. They had robbed and beaten other kids before, but Alex got the worst of it. Linked to the Los Hermanos Koalas gang, they kicked and punched him, and hit him with sticks and bottles. And when he was on the ground, unconscious, they searched his pockets to rob him. They later uploaded the video to social networks. From this Monday they will have to account for this savagery.
