11 elderly relocated from overcrowded nursing home and hidden on a construction site in Tunari

Amid scandal on elderly found in terrible conditions in some nursing homes in Voluntari, near Bucharest, a new similar case was discovered. On Monday evening, the police officers from Ilfov, together with the firefighters from Emergency Situations Inspectorate and medical staff from the ambulance, detected 11 elderly, vulnerable people, some of them with disabilities, as well as another person who accompanied them, in Tunari, in a building under construction.

“We were requested by the Ilfov Police to intervene in support in this situation. It is about 11 people moved to a house under construction, without minimum necessary conditions and without safety conditions for them. Crews were sent from SMURD, including a crew with a doctor, and from the Ambulance a crew with a doctor and an assistant. Two multiple casualty vehicles and other first aid crew were also dispatched from SMURD. All together they evaluated the persons. Six of them will be transferred and have probably already arrived at an identified location that has good conditions for their reception, and that does not pose problems from the point of view of quality and safety. Four people were taken by their relatives, from what I understand, and there is another person who is being discussed for her transfer, because I understood that at one point it was not wanted, that is, they refused the transfer to the new location. The details are to be determined by colleagues from the police,” said the head of the the Directorate for Emergency Situations, Raed Arafat.

The woman who accompanied the 11 people stated that they were brought from a center in Voluntari, Ilfov county, the police later said.

Further investigations revealed that the elderly would have been taken there because the center they came from was too crowded. They were residents of a nearby social center, but were removed from there. Some witnesses say they were carried with the sheets. They should not have been found by the authorities during the control because they were extra over the number of places that the nursing home has. The shocking discovery was made by the police after a television crew called 112. The journalists told them that elderly people with disabilities were being carried in sheets and hidden in a house under construction.

The 11 elders were hidden in the wilderness. The house where they were taken is in the middle of the field, about 5 kilometers away from the town of Tunari. There is no paved road leading here, and the area is full of stray dogs. Many of the hidden elders have mental illnesses and did not even understand what was happening to them.