A month in a coma after the brutal beating of the Koala Brothers

Eugen Ionita, Álex's father, the young Romanian who has been in a coma for a month after the brutal beating of the Koala Brothers gang, recounts the last hours he was with his son.JAVIER HERNÁNDEZ

"There is no hatred, only pain, a lot of pain," says Eugen Ionita as she embraces the photograph of her son, Alexandru. After a month in a coma due to the brutal beating by a score of gang members of the Koala Brothers, a gang from Barakaldo that is dedicated to robbing and beating in droves, the 23-year-old Romanian who resided in Lemona, Bizkaia, are sold out. He arrived at the Hospital de Cruces on the night of July 25 with his head open. He is torn between life and death with a very damaged part of the brain and pain that forces doctors to sedate him so that he does not suffer.

After several interventions, but without bandages on his head, Alex seems to be dreaming. Next to him his mother, Ana Claudia, slumbers, who has not left him for a minute during the barely four days that he has been in the plant. The management of the Cruces hospital has allowed him to sleep next to him these days. Last Wednesday while Eugen remembered in Basauri the last hours with Alex, Ana Claudia took care of him as best she could. On Thursday he was transferred, again urgently, to intensive care. His parents cling to the last thread of their son's life. “The first day the body asked me to go out and look for the animals that hit it,” says Eugen with tears in his eyes: “Now I just want them to stay in jail for a long time, a lot. May they not do this to anyone else "implore his deep blue eyes:" That this serves at least something. "

Throughout this month, the case that is being followed in the Durango court against the aggressors - at the moment fifteen detainees, more than half minors - is also pending on how the young Romanian evolves. The aggressors can face the penalties derived from an attempted murder if Alex survives, to which crimes such as belonging to a criminal group and robbery with violence could be added. After pounding his head, they robbed him. But each day that passes they are closer to the charge of homicide if the young man dies, or even murder, due to the special characteristics of the attack in which a score of attackers made it impossible for him to defend himself. In the video recorded by the last of the detainees you can hear “kill him, kill him”,harangued by one of the participants in the brutal beating that took place during a drinking bottle in a park in the Jauregiberria area, in Amorebieta. And also all of them will face compensation. In the case of minors, their parents will have to pay them.

For Eugen, the worst August of his life is also proving eternal. He looks at the picture of his son and his eyes get wet. He talks about him, how he was, his memories and the jokes he used to play, and laughs as if he were in front of him. Sitting in a cafeteria in Basauri, he remembers the afternoon when he last saw him smiling: “He cut my hair. He joked, he told me he looked younger. After he said goodbye, he went with some friends for a walk ”. That night he did not return home and suspects that even if he survives, he will never be the way he was, ever again. Doctors speculate that there could be serious consequences if the miracle of survival occurs.

“That night I called him on the phone several times, and the next day, but it was turned off.

It had already happened once, ”he explains resignedly.

“Then a policeman called me and asked me since when I haven't seen my son.

The next thing was to tell me that he was in a coma at [Hospital de] Cruces. "

Alex repairs his father's bicycle a few weeks before the beating that left him in a coma.

JAVIER HERNANDEZ

The memory of Alex remains in Lemona. It had been a long life on the street. Suddenly he was fixing the bicycle his father was going to work with on a bench in the center, as he enjoyed taking a walk or partying with his friends. None of his friends want to give their name, just in case one of the Koala gets away and looks for them. But they will speak before the judge about what they saw and what they think, openly. "They are apprentices of murderers, if they let them go they will do it again", says a friend of Alex's full of rage at what has happened: "It would be a failure if they returned to the only thing they know how to do, steal, hit, threaten", he says, "and now murder." One of them called the police when he saw the beating they were giving him and that, for the moment, saved Alex's life. “They have to judge everyone, those who participated and those who encouraged,even if they didn't give him a kick. They are also guilty, ”says Alexandru's father.

That small universe to the east of Bilbao in which the towns of Lemona, Amorebieta, Galdakao and Basauri are located already has a terrible connection with Romania.

Alex lived in Lemona and worked in construction in Amorebieta, where he was brutally beaten.

Eugen works in Galdakao.

Father and son planned to work together from September with Estephan, who acts as a translator for Alex's father.

Their project was to rebuild their lives and get some money to build a new one in the Transylvanian city of Alba Iulia, where they came from a few years ago.

Alex's father asks for justice and that at least the beating of his son "serves a purpose."

JAVIER HERNANDEZ

Eugen has to keep working to survive.

He does not have aid and they have expenses, more so now that his ex-wife, Ana Claudia, Alex's mother, has been in Bilbao for four weeks.

Her work was in Berlin.

He is lucky that Estephan, who has a construction company specializing in renovations, has welcomed them into his home.

Álex has liked football since he played as a child in Romania in children's categories.

"He is a responsible and hardworking boy, he would give everything in exchange for his life," his father whispers.