He has been on the run since December 2014 when the body of his step-daughter Bruna Nunes was found savagely beaten on waste ground in the community of Aldeia Nova, near Rogil (Aljezur). But today came the news that relatives, friends and many hundreds of people horrified by the brutality of Bruna’s end have been praying for: Mikhail Rasvan Oprea is in police custody awaiting extradition to Portugal.
It is the result PJ police have been diligently working towards for the last 25 months.
According to Romanian news service Ziarul Clujean, 35-year.old Oprea was identified last year, and kept under surveillance while legal steps were painstakingly followed.
He was finally arrested on Tuesday as he worked in an apartment in the Mănăştur area of Romania’s city Cluj-Napoca, and could be extradited within the next 15 days.
Ziarul Clujean says Oprea was presented before judges today (Wednesday) “to confirm the mandate for detention”.
As we explained in a commemorative article to Bruna ‘one year on’ from her terrible death, European Arrest Warrants were put in place within weeks of her murder, but at that point Rasvan had disappeared without trace (click here).
Today in Romania, news services are full of the story, detailing how 17-year-old Bruna was “raped, strangled and battered”, the cause of death: “a deep cut to her brain caused by a sharp object, like an axe”.
This was an horrific crime that still haunts Bruna’s classmates from Lagos’ Júlio Dantas school. But at least today there is the feeling that justice may at last prevail.
“Finally he has been caught”, reads a post on the Bruna Nunes Athlete Facebook page.
All the Algarve has to hear next is that the step-father of Rodrigo Lapa is being brought back to answer charges for the murder for his 15-year-old step-son 11 months ago, and the horrors of the last two years may find some closure.
