TAMARAC, Fla. – Dr. Emilian Cristea said he can still feel how quickly his life flashed before his eyes as he stared down the barrel of a long gun in Broward County. He said he feared that he wouldn’t make it home to the two loves of his life — his wife Daniela and their 9-year-old daughter Juliana.
Cristea, who saves lives as a nephrologist, was behind the wheel of his Tesla, waiting on Commercial Boulevard in Tamarac, when an angry man suddenly got out of a Lexus and approached him. The Lexus was stolen and the man, a wanted fugitive, had managed to evade police in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach.
“He came with the rifle and then pointed it toward me,” Cristea said, adding the man had his finger on the trigger when he shouted: “Get the [expletive] out of the car!”
Cristea unlocked the door and got out as quickly as he could. Not knowing that he had gotten caught up in the middle of a tri-county police chase Wednesday, he assumed he had survived a life-threatening road rage incident and used his Apple iWatch to call his wife.
“All I could hear were the sirens and I knew something was wrong,” Daniela Cristea said.
Emilian Cristea said he was shaking like a leaf. Even though the danger had passed, his hands were trembling. He attempted to describe the traumatic event, but he was incoherent. Knowing that he needed her help, Daniela Cristea used GPS tech to track his Tesla, and she got in her car.
The fugitive drove the Tesla westbound on Commercial Boulevard. A law enforcement agent in an unmarked pickup truck crashed into it near Rock Island Road and this prompted the fugitive to jump out and run. Daniela Cristea arrived and found the Tesla damaged.
“I was terrified,” she said. “There were helicopters everywhere, police, 40 or 50.”
While searching for her husband, a kind Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy who had witnessed what happened helped her amid the chaos by allowing her to watch the patrol’s dashcam video. Daniela Cristea said she watched in horror how her husband was the victim of an armed carjacking.
“This could have been so much worse,” she said, adding that she felt relief when she learned that he was safe.
Emilian Cristea wasn’t the only victim. Deputies said the fugitives, Edward Foster and Matthew Geimer, Jr., also engaged in an armed robbery to take a Rolex from a man in North Miami; fled in a stolen Lexus from Opa-locka to Boca Raton and back to Tamarac; and broke into a woman’s house.
Foster and Geimer, both 22, both wanted fugitives in Miami-Dade and both under investigation by the FBI, were at the Broward County main jail on Friday evening in Fort Lauderdale. Deputies were holding them without bond on a U.S. Marshals Service hold pending federal charges.
While still recovering, Cristea said he has replayed what happened several times, as often victims of trauma do. He has thought about how fast his body moved while the fugitive held him at gunpoint and shouted an order — all despite his brief hesitation.
“For a second, I thought I could get away,” he said. “Just press on the gas pedal and get away.”
Cristea said he is grateful to have made the right decision to survive the dangerous encounter.
Geimer, a convicted felon accused of violating his probation, has a history of weapon-related charges as a teen growing up in South Florida, and Foster, who has a long history of arrests including some for weapon charges, had an arrest warrant out for his arrest.
Records show fugitives’ long criminal history
GEIMER: Florida Department of Corrections records show Geimer violated a Nov. 4-Nov. 11, 2027 probation term, after three convictions for cases in Miami-Dade and Broward counties in 2018.
In 2019, Geimer was convicted and sentenced to a five-year probation term for an armed robbery in Miami-Dade on Feb. 4, 2018 — when he was just 17 years old, FDLE records show.
Last year, a judge sentenced Geimer to probation in two cases in Broward: A three-year, eight-day term was for an armed carjacking on Jan. 17, 2018, and a two-year term was for a burglary on Jan. 31, 2018.
FOSTER also has a record of arrests in Miami-Dade. He has a pending Dec. 26 case for carrying a concealed weapon. His most recent court hearing was on April 3 when a judge revoked his bond and issued a warrant for his arrest.
Police officers had also arrested Foster on Feb. 13, in Opa-locka, accusing him of a weapons charge and resisting arrest, but prosecutors dropped the case on April 3, records show.
There were two other Miami-Dade Police Department arrests last year for battery on Aug. 29, and for possession of a controlled substance and grand theft of a vehicle on Dec. 26, records show. Both cases were closed.
Homestead police officers had arrested Foster several times when he was 18 and 19 years old, but prosecutors dropped most of the cases, Miami-Dade court records show.
Officers arrested him on Feb. 3, 2020, for petit theft; on March 26, 2020, for a concealed weapons charge; and on April 4, 2019, for burglary, petit theft, and unlawful possession of a stolen credit card.
Prosecutors dropped the 2019 stolen credit card charge, and Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cristina Miranda ordered probation for the burglary and theft charges but she did not formally convict him, records show.
Miami-Dade police officers had also arrested Foster on June 19, 2019, accusing him of carrying a concealed weapon and marijuana possession, but prosecutors dropped the case, records show.