He Is Coming Home…in a Box

Florin Ilie Mois was 21 years old. He has been working in France for five years. He knew his way around and was selling cars and working on the construction sites. He was shot on Monday night.

He lived in Charenthon, a calm suburb of Paris. On Saturday, he wanted to go together with his friends to a discotheque, Les Marines, in Auberville, were the Pakistanis owner was playing "manele" (a Romanian genre of music) every Staurday night. There were all kinds of people in the discotheque, most of them were Romanians, but there were also some other immigrants from the Balkans. They stayed there until 4 o’clock in the morning, when a scandal started. The discotheque’s bodyguards got the hoodlums outside.

BULLETS. When they left the "Manele-Party", Florin and his friends saw that the scandal continued outside the discotheque. Without saying anything, two white guys from the turbulent group came to the boys from Maramures (Romania) and started beating them. One of the attackers pulled out a gun and shot the pavement. Florin and his friends ran. Florin Pop was the first. One of the boys was shot in the leg. Florin Mois got shot in the back, but managed a few more hundred yards with his friend Alexandru Dumuta.

He hid behind a car. He started to feel the pain. In the meantime, the attackers smashed Florin Pop’s head with the gun. Then, they realized they had made a mistake, that the boys from Maramures were not the same boys that they had had a fight with earlier that night. They ran away.

ONCE UPON A TIME… Family album, now. Florin together with some friends in the summer.

HE DIED ON HIS FEET. There were no reactions from the people in the discotheque. Florin remained next to Alex. They stood on the pavement for one quarter of an hour. Another Romanian friend eventually came and took them away with his car. At the Les Orelles Hospital, where they arrived initially, nobody paid attention to them for more than 15 minutes. Florin was taken to the emergency room by his friends.

He was suffocating. The 22 mm bullet had got to his lung. A doctor told them to wait. He examined the boy, he said he wasn’t capable of doing anything and sent them to another hospital, Beaujon. Like in "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, the movie, he was moved from one department to another. He was still conscious at 8 o’clock in the morning. He died at about 9 o’clock, in surgery.

INVESTIGATION. The Police seems to have been a lot more efficient than the medical services. Florin was invited by Commissar Cedric from the Crime Brigade and he identified one of the attackers using a passport photo. He seems to be from the F.Y.R. Macedonia and might be the shooter as well. The investigation continues as we write this article.

SORROW. Back at Florin’s house, on the Verdun Street, his parents had already come from the Certeze locality (Romania). The present article has been written in this house. Alex Dumuta and Florin Pop are also here. I was there in the moment in which Florin was calling on his parents. He said: " NO, mom, two punks shot me in the leg, but there is nothing bad. They let me go from the hospital, but I have to go for one or two times more for them to clean the wound".

THE NEWS. On the hospital bed, after the announce of the death. Florin died on his feet, his parents say.

Because he stayed in France for more than three months, he is afraid of being expelled. He, as well as the Mois family are displeased at the way the French medical authorities treated Florin.

PREMONITIONS . Florin was puttying money away to buy himself a house. By working on the construction sites he managed to have an income of around 1,200 - 1,300 euros every month. One week before he died, he told his friends out of nowhere that he wouldn’t get to see his house finished. In the same time, on last Monday, he told Maria, his girlfriend, that, in case he dies, she would find someone else in less than one week.

FAREWELL

Florin Mois will come back home, where he will be buried in his native village, Certeze. "The neighbors and the family have confirmed that Ilie Florin Mois will be brought home to be buried. His relatives, who are in Paris right now, are facing some difficulties with the necessary documents", said the Police chief in Certeze, Ioan Cionca, for Rompress. He added that the locals have been worried and very concerned, because approximately 1,500 people from the village left to work in France. The Romanian Minister of External Affairs says that the Romanian Embassy in Paris will support as much as they can the repatriation of the body.