Man stabbed pregnant girlfriend to death then ‘went to visit Queen’
A MAN who stabbed his heavily pregnant girlfriend with a pair of scissors then went to “visit the Queen” as she lay dying has been jailed for life.
Ioan Campeanu, 44, plunged the blade into Andra Hilitanu’s neck and waited two hours to raise the alarm on June 1 last year.
He drove around central London past Buckingham Palace before returning to his flat in northwest London and calling 999, the Old Bailey heard.
The court was told 28-yearold Ms Hilitanu’s 40 stab injuries were all “survivable” and it was possible it could have taken more than 20 minutes for her to die.
Campeanu was found guilty of murdering his seven-month pregnant girlfriend and destroying their unborn daughter. He was jailed for life with a minimum term of 26 years, with 14 years for child’s death to run concurrently.
Sentencing, Mr Justice Jacobs said mother-of-two Ms Hilitanu suffered a “horrible” death, alone and far from her home country.
She suffered 40 stab wounds, as well as other blunt force injuries during the attack in her Neasden flat, over 25 minutes.
Earlier in mitigation, Michael Bromley-Martin QC said: “I described this as a horror case and a lesson perhaps in the dreadful end of the inevitable spiral caused by addiction to drugs and in particular to cocaine.”
He said the defendant was in such as state after the stabbing that he “had it in his mind to visit Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen for medical assistance”.
Prosecutor Brian O’Neill QC said “self-induced intoxication” was no mitigation and pointed out Campeanu had denied any mental health problems when he was seen by two social workers the day before the killing.
The trial heard the killing followed years of domestic abuse by the defendant, who was raised in a “brutal” Romanian orphanage.
Ms Hilitanu’s older sister, Ramona Hilitanu, said in a victim impact statement: “Ioan Campeanu could have sought help from so many sources and yet chose to do nothing. I will never be able to forget this fact.”