Eugen Grigore was a Romanian cargo truck driver from Iași. Contemporary reporting describes him as working long hours, with sources stating he worked about 14 hours a day to support his family. He was married and had three children, and the family lived in the Copou neighborhood of Iași.

Accounts published years later—frequently citing criminalist and author Traian Tandin—state that in May 1974 Grigore was sent home from work after being told his house was on fire. These sources allege that a group linked to a nearby Romani nomadic camp entered the home to steal, then set the house on fire, resulting in the deaths of Grigore’s wife and children. The same reporting states that investigators allegedly struggled to obtain cooperation from neighbors as witnesses due to fear of retaliation, and that no clear legal resolution followed at the time.

In July 1974, Eugen Grigore drove a cargo truck into a group of tents belonging to Romani nomads in the Ciurea area of Iași County, Romania. The incident is described in available sources as a deliberate vehicle-ramming attack. Reports state that 24 people were killed and approximately 50 or more were injured.

Later reporting—often attributed to Traian Tandin’s account—states that Grigore carried out the attack after approximately two months, during which he believed authorities were ineffective and that he was threatened to withdraw his complaint. Some sources report that he consumed about half a liter of cognac before driving into the encampment around midday.

Sources also state that the communist regime restricted press coverage of the incident. Reporting describes the case as classified or suppressed to avoid escalation into ethnic conflict. Some accounts say survivors from the camp were moved from Iași to Botoșani.

Grigore was sentenced to life imprisonment (the date of conviction is not consistently published in accessible summaries). In 1990, his life sentence was reduced to 28 years. In 1995, he was transferred to a neuropsychiatry hospital in Botoșani. Multiple sources report that he was released in 2001, with Libertatea specifying January 2001.

After his release, several outlets reported that he lived homeless in Iași. Some later reporting states that he was detained during a police raid in 2002 among homeless communities near the student campus area, though these details are not uniformly presented across all summaries.

Grigore’s death is reported as occurring in July 2009 after he was struck by a truck in Iași. One account specifies 23 July 2009 and describes the deceased as a homeless man identified as Eugen Grigore; other reporting notes uncertainty around identification in later retellings.