A 11-year-old boy was fatally shot during celebrations ending the school year at the 6th elementary school in Acharnon/Menidi municipality in northwest Athens short after 9 o’ clock Thursday evening. The incident is unprecedented for Greece. It shocks parents, the community and the Greek society. While it was initially assumed the boy fainted and suffered fatal head injuries, the autopsy revealed that the boy was killed by a stray bullet. Media question how the hospital doctors did not see the injury was caused by a bullet.
Citing eye-witnesses, Greek media report that while students and parents were standing in the school yard, when the boy suddenly collapsed, fell on the ground and started bleeding from the head.
Amid panic and screaming children, sports teachers rushed to give first aid to the boy, somebody called the ambulance.
The student was transferred to a children’s hospital in Athens. “The boy, 11, was transferred to the hospital at 10:30 pm, he was intubated and his conditions was “very serious”, the hospital said in a statement. “Doctors’ efforts to revive the boy were fruitless.”
The boy had a trauma in the back the head. Doctors assumed the injury was caused due to falling. An autopsy was ordered by the hospital authorities.
On Friday morning the shocking finding: the boy was hit by a bullet.
“The bullet hit the boy on top of his head,” the coroner told news website newsit.gr. “It looks as if it was a stray bullet with a tragic effect and not a deliberate action against the boy.”
Nobody has reportedly heard any shooting, the boy was standing among other children, parents and teachers in the yard.
Bystanders assumed that the boy had fainted and hit his head on the ground, therefore the bleeding.
“Fainting” was also the information the hospital doctors received when the boy arrived at the hospital. According to state broadcaster ERT, the boy arrived at the hospital without pulse and the doctors’ first duty was to revive him. “When a patient is about to lose his life, doctors try to revive him, first of all,” ERT reported citing the coroner in an effort to justify why the doctors did not see the injury was caused by a bullet.
Police investigates all possibilities.
Investigated is also the possibility that residents called the police and reported sounds of shooting in the area, private ANT1 TV reported.
A school celebration that ended in tragedy.
According to latest information, police is conducting investigation in homes and in Roma settlements around the school. There have been several complaints about shootings on Thursday night, Skai reports, adding that residents have been often complaining about criminality in the area.
Two women injured by stray bullets
According to media, shootings from guns are often heard in the area.
Radio website StoKokkino reports of another ‘mysterious’ incident that occurred last Saturday, June 3, at 9:30 pm. Two women were slightly injured by stray bullets. Both women were sitting in two different cafeterias located one kilometer away from the school in Korydallos district. Both women had suffered injuries in the legs. They were taken to the hospital and received first aid. The bullet had a 9mm caliber.
