“She was going crazy, hitting the kids on the field!” » Testimonies and gruesome details

Moreover, one of the aggressors, the 13-year-old minor whom we will call MD in the following, ended up being registered at LPS Banatul, one of the most important juvenile football nurseries in Romania. The club is known for training players who reach top level competitions, including the first echelon.

On Wednesday, January 21, the police discovered a 15-year-old teenager murdered, set on fire and buried in the yard of a house. The prosecutors' investigation indicated the involvement of three minors, friends or close acquaintances of the victim. Among them is a 13-year-old child, considered by investigators to be the main author.

According to the information made public by the authorities and reported in the public space, the crime was not a spontaneous act. Investigators speak of premeditation and a sequence of actions that far exceeded any imaginable age limit for those involved. After committing the act, the victim's body was allegedly set on fire, and the attempt to hide the traces continued by burying the body in the yard of one of the homes.

The case generated a wave of community outrage, fear among parents, and a national debate about responsibility and prevention among minors.

In the documentation for this investigation, GSP opens a different perspective on the case in Timiș. We focus exclusively on MD's sporting profile, coaches' evaluations and observed signals within a system that assumes rules, discipline and control.

The child who killed in the crime in Timiș, noted early, at AS Bobda

MD started football at AS Bobda, a club from a village in the same municipality. He was coached by Ciprian Manolache, a technician with experience in training children, known in the area for sending several juniors to bigger clubs, including UTA.

The youngster was selected around the age of 10 and spent two years in a group of children born in 2012, and physically he was clearly different from his peers.

“He had a more developed physique, played central defender and was quite strong on his feet compared to his colleagues”Manolache tells Gazeta.

This aspect helped him quickly stand out: strength in duels, composure, commanding presence in a central area of ​​the pitch, attributes that, at the children's level, can create the impression of a “prospective” player.

Beyond strictly sports data, the coach from AS Bobda talks about recurring behavior problems, observable during training and matches.

“The violence issues were obvious. When he got angry on the pitch he would hit kids on purpose without the ball in play“. The coach describes episodes in which the child's interventions were not related to the game phase, but to impulsive reactions. In such situations, the measures applied were the usual ones for the juvenile level, verbal warning, temporary removal from the game, turns of the field: “I would take him and give him five turns, ten turns of the field. He didn't say anything, but he kept repeating.”

The minor accused of murder in the case of the Cenai crime

He had a rather strange personality, he was very ugly, he had conflicts with everyone. And during matches, I was kicking him out because he was going crazy, kicking his teammates without the ball. I kept it as short as I could, I listened to it, as they say. In the last year she had gone crazy, Bobda and Cena are together, and the children were telling me what she was doing, that she was smoking cigarettes all day, a very wrong environment. I can't blame the family, his father was working, his mother was also a night shift, I guess her wife didn't want her son to end up here, but given that he was left unattended, that's the consequences.
– Ciprian Manolache, coach

“Most of the kids do that at Cenei. They sit outside in the evening and smoke weed”

The technician talks about the existence of a circle of friends, made up of minors of similar ages, who spent a lot of time together outside of class.

“It's bad at Cenai, with drugs, all that nonsense, that's what most kids do there at this age. 10- and 11-year-olds stay outside in the evening and smoke weed.

We live in a world where 10-12 year olds behave like adults. They go out in the evening, they sit at the gate with beer bottles, everyone smokes, weed, normal cigarettes, that's their concern and nobody does anything.

Shame on all four children. They stated that the victim was terrorizing them, you can't do something like that! How much hate would you have to kill that boy in that hall?! They got high after they killed him, not before. They went to the one selling it and took it,” the story continues.

In several photos posted on social media, MD appears with his fist clenched, right next to his parents.

The minor accused of murder in the case of the Cenai crime used to photograph himself with his fist clenched

I have good children, but the sieve sifts. Whomever we had with this behavior, we kicked them out or they left on their own. Rather than ruin a group, I'd rather give them up.
– Ciprian Manolache

• The Prosecutor's Office of the Timiș Court reported on Monday that the 13-year-old minor involved in the case known as the “Cenei crime” is under the measure of specialized supervision ordered by the Timiș Child Protection Commission. The mayor of Cenei commune, Sîrgean Tanasin, stated that the authorities know where the child is, but cannot make this information public.

• As for the other two minors investigated in the same case, they were remanded in custody. In the case of the 13-year-old child, the prosecutors explained that no preventive measure could be ordered, as the law provides, absolutely, for the lack of discernment under the age of 14, an essential condition for engaging in criminal liability, according to the press release issued on Monday by the Timiș Prosecutor's Office.

“LPS Banatul saw something in him”

MD arrived in 2024 at Banatul High School with Sports Program. The transfer was not a random one, but came as a result of the fact that the minor stood out in the local competitions.

“My parents brought it, it was kept for about two years, I had it since I was 10,” Manolache said. In youth football, physical differences and basic qualities can contribute to a move to a club with greater possibilities, and the coach says that MD was tracked and noticed precisely because of his profile: “The people at LPS saw something in him, that no one will take you if you don't show something”the technician confesses.

He was noticed by Pavel Velcotă, a coach who monitored him for six months. “In 2024, I transferred him to the sports line. I watched him in a match where he scored a goal from a free kick. Good physique, tall,” says Velcotă, specifying that, in terms of role, he used MD both as a stopper and as a central midfielder.

It also describes a difference between the moment of selection and what followed after integration into the batch. The child did not have a consistent course in training and in matches: “We have two similar groups, my group was a selection group, and in order to bring them to our school we bring them through the Sports School Club. Both entities we operate as LPS. He didn't really come to training, he didn't come to games, after which we excluded him from the team.”

The decisive moment was leaving for the training course, when attendance is mandatory: “He didn't come. Last year, I waited for him for half an hour at the departure. I called him, then excluded him. We have the ID, we told him to come and get it.”

The author of the Crime from Cenei, together with colleagues from LPS Banatul, CSS 2012 group

Hallucinatory details: They tried to desecrate the corpse. Three dealers picked up on descents

In the last few days, the prosecutors and the police have expanded their investigations into the trafficking of prohibited substances among the minors involved in the tragedy. The Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) and the Timişoara Organized Crime Brigade carried out a series of house searches in the town of Cena, as part of an action to document how the teenagers involved in the crime committed against Mario Berinde bought or consumed drugs.

“There were raids, dealers were found in three houses. Can you tell?! In a small village, find 3-4 of them selling drugs and the police didn't know anything. Or they don't want to know!”, says Manolache.

Following the searches, approximately 110 grams of cannabis, a grinder, an electronic scale and other evidence were discovered and seized, which will be analyzed in the context of the file. Based on the collected evidence and the administered evidence, the DIICOT prosecutors ordered the detention of two young people, 17 and 24 years old, investigated for high-risk drug trafficking, in continued form.

According to the investigators, beginning in the summer of 2025, the 24-year-old man would have repeatedly made available to the 17-year-old person under investigation different amounts of cannabis.

2760of inhabitants has the commune of Cenai, according to the census carried out in 2021

I don't know if you know, the situation was much worse than known. They tried to cut off his hand, his head, a bunch of stuff they tried to do. They prepared his pit the day before, then they had no room to put him. They tried, but they couldn't. Then they called the third child, should you come from home, put gasoline too, pour it over, set it on fire?! I haven't seen anything like it. But even if you see something like that, you see axes, you see the dead, you tell your parents and he was at home today, don't be complicit with them there. It's something horror!
– Ciprian Manolache