The family of a 74-year-old Queens man who was mowed down by a hit-and-run driver more than three years ago is happy the international fugitive accused of the crime is finally in cuffs — and they’re hoping he gets “the full sentence.”
Be Tran’s kin spoke out one day after Florin Stoian, a 30-year-old Romanian national who is linked to a slew of crimes across the globe, was hauled back to the Big Apple to face a manslaughter rap in the deadly 2022 hit-and-run that killed the beloved food delivery driver.
“I want justice for my brother,” Hong Tran, 70, told The Post Thursday. “You hit someone on the street, and you don’t stop. You are not human. You hit someone in an accident, you stop. You should stay there and tell the police what happened. He didn’t do that — he ran.
“I feel better now,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for more than three years.”
Stoian is accused of slamming into Be Tran while behind the wheel of a rented black BMW X6 on Aug. 14, 2022, as the elderly victim was crossing Myrtle Avenue in Ridgewood.
The accused killer sped away from the scene, crashed the car and ran off — only to return hours later to set the car on fire, damaging several buildings in the process, prosecutors said.
“That night, I went to the police station with his daughter and my son, too,” Hong Tran recalled. “We stayed there until midnight. They knew who hit my brother, they knew the car because there are a lot of street cameras but they didn’t know where he was.”
Stoian, who is wanted by the international crime enforcement agency, Interpol, went on to allegedly rack up crimes in Michigan, Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands before being nabbed for theft in Germany.
He was serving a three-year prison term in Germany when the NYPD identified him as the suspect in the 2022 death of Be Tran in Queens, authorities said this week.
Stoian was taken to the 104th Precinct stationhouse on Wednesday and charged with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide assault, arson, leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death, criminal mischief, reckless driving and tampering with physical evidence.
His lawyer, Todd Spodek, told reporters his client was innocent and expressed condolences to the family over “a deeply unfortunate situation” — something the Tran family wasn’t buying.
“He’s sorry that he got caught,” the victim’s nephew, 31-year-old Tuan Tran told The Post. “This wasn’t his first, he has a history of committing crimes so I don’t think he’s sorry.
“I haven’t seen any sign of remorse. They are just empty words,” he said. “I want him to get the full sentence that the law allows.”
Read the full article here
