The chief of the Romanian police Ioan Buda was fired by the Romanian Interior ministry on Saturday after a series of errors in his police department led to their failure to save a missing girl.
ADVERTISEMENTThe chief of the Romanian police Ioan Buda was fired by the Romanian Interior ministry on Saturday after a series of errors in his police department led to their failure to save a missing girl.
"I have decided to dismiss the chief of the police and the head of the Olt department (...) because this situation necessitates extreme measures," the Interior minister, Nicolae Moga, said late on Friday.
A suspect in the case of the missing girl, a 65-year-old man, was in custody on Saturday morning, according to local media.
Alexandra, 15, went missing on Wednesday after she was picked up by a car while hitchhiking to go home to Dobrosloveni, southern Romania, the police said.
On Thursday morning, she managed to call the 112 emergency number three times and gave indications to the police regarding the place she was being kept.
"He's coming, he's coming!" she shouted on the phone before the call stopped, Buda told reporters.
According to Alexandra's family, the police had taken her disappearance lightly and intervened very late.
After three raids to three erroneous addresses, the police finally located the house that the teenager described more than 12 hours after she called. They then requested official authorisation to raid the house and waited until dawn to enter, despite the emergency.
By the time they entered the house, 19 hours had passed since the teenager's phonecall. They found "human remains", that will be analysed, as well as jewellery that matches Alexandra's.
Interrogated at the scene, the suspect refused to answer the police's questions.
"It is mandatory for all who have mismanaged this case, with tragic consequences, to resign," Romania's president Klaus Iohannis said. He also blamed that the head of special telecommunications for having failed to precisely determine the girl's location during her phonecall.
According to the police, a second teenager, whose family reported as missing three months ago in the same area, could have been kidnapped by the same suspect.