A 60-year-old man in Larissa, Central Greece, committed suicide after the double murder of two Roma men he was working with. Previously he had claimed that the victims owed him money.
The man had shot the two men dead on Saturday and early Sunday morning, he called the police to confess the murder.
When police officer rushed to his carpentry, they found the man to have been holed up in his workshop, threatening them that he was holding a hand grenade and had also other explosives.
Police negotiators tried for almost 8 hours to convince him to come out and not commit suicide.
Around 3 o’ clock in the afternoon, the man fired several shots with a Kalashnikov in the air and at one policeman, local onlarissa.gr reported. He quickly shot at himself with a pistol.
“He was determined, had a serious health problem and was in the final stages,” his lawyer told media after the incident was over.
The victims, two middle-aged Roma men, were from Volos and Skiathos. One of them, a 50-year-old man, appears to not have known the perpetrator before as he helped his friend to transport some machinery to Larissa.
Police findings in the perpetrators’ shop and home.
The perpetrator was known to police due to domestic violence against his former wife well as for attacks at police during an anti-fascist demonstration in 2010. The 60-year-old was a local elections candidate with the neo-nazi Golden Dawn, media reported, but the party had him later expelled. He was also arrested in the past, for debs to the state.
Police investigates the incident.
