A former police officer was sentenced to 18 years in prison for premeditated murder and malicious hooliganism. The offender fired his hunting rifle toward the passenger of a car, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to a press release of the Prosecutor’s General Office, the incident happened in the night of August 11, 2010, in Drochia district. A man was driving regularly on the road between Donduseni and Drochia. He had two passengers from his village in a Vaz car. At a certain point, a fire was shot at the Vaz from the window of an unidentified vehicle that was overtaking the Vaz. A 21 year old passenger on the backseat was shot dead in the head. The Drochia prosecutors had to verify 150 smoothbore rifles, performed multiple ballistic, chemical and biological tests, performed searches, wiretapped phones and heard over 90 people, etc. The murderer was identified 6 months after he had committed the crime. He was found to be a former policeman, aged 29, living in Balti. The prosecutors established that in the night of the crime, he was drunk and passenger of a Daewoo Nexia vehicle. In the moment of the overtaking, he fired a pellets bullet from his smoothbore gun towards the Vaz car. Besides the jail term, upon the prosecutor’s request, the defendant will have to pay 104,322 lei material damages and 300,000 lei moral damages to the victim’s family. The sentence can be appealed.