A 29-year-old Romanian woman, convicted of child abuse, is currently at the center of an extradition process in Great Britain, after she was located and arrested in the city of Doncaster, in the north of England.
Cristina Târnoveanu was sentenced in March 2025 by a court in Iași to four and a half years in prison for child neglect, after allegedly leaving her daughter, aged approximately two years, alone at home on several occasions.
According to Romanian prosecutors, the child was allegedly left unattended for up to eight hours, while the mother went to have fun in night clubs.
The child was found after neighbors heard crying
The case came to light after neighbors alerted the authorities, saying they heard the child crying in the apartment. The police intervened, and later the girl was taken over by social services.
According to the prosecutors in Iasi, the woman would have left the child alone repeatedly.
“On August 6, 2019, between 4:00 p.m. and 12:30 a.m., and August 7, 2019, between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m., as well as between June 1 and August 6, 2019, while she was away from home, as the case may be, at work, in personal interest, for leisure or in night clubs in the municipality of Vaslui, the defendant left her 2-and-a-half-year-old minor daughter without help, unsupervised, locked in the building and in unsuitable living conditions, namely in an environment with waste and faecal matter, without providing her with the necessary food for the period in which the minor was left alone”, said prosecutor Ștefan Fânariu, the spokesperson of the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the Iași District Court.
Sentenced in 2025, disappeared after the verdict
The acts for which she was tried allegedly took place between June and August 2019. The trial began in 2022 and the final sentence was handed down in March 2025.
After the conviction, Târnoveanu was released pending the resolution of the appeal. After the appeal was rejected and a warrant was issued for the execution of the sentence, the woman was not found by the authorities.
The Romanian authorities later issued an arrest warrant, and her name was included on the wanted list.
Arrested in Great Britain
The woman was located in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, where she was arrested last year by officers of the National Extradition Unit, after receiving an official extradition request from Romania.
The woman is currently out on bail in the UK, set at £5,000. However, the court imposed several restrictions on him, including wearing an electronic bracelet and complying with a ban on leaving the house at night.
The extradition process continues
The case was recently heard at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, and the court is due to rule on the extradition request on March 18. Contacted by the press, the woman stated that she opposes extradition and claims that the way the case was presented in Romania does not reflect reality.
“I have refused extradition and I will defend myself,” she said.
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