Initial findings in teen shooting refute officer’s testimony
The forensic findings from a crime scene in northern Greece where a police officer shot a teenager who allegedly failed to pay a gas station bill appear to be refuting the claims of the officer.
The shooting occurred outside Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, before dawn Monday. Officers from a motorcycle patrol chased the teenager’s pickup truck after a gas station employee reported the unpaid bill of 20 euros. The 16-year-old, a member of the Roma minority, is in critical condition in a hospital in Thessaloniki.
The 34-year-old police officer who allegedly shot him in the head was suspended from duty and arrested. He appeared in court Tuesday morning on a felony charge of attempted manslaughter with possible intent and a misdemeanor count of illegally firing his weapon.
The officer has claimed that he fired with his weapon a warning shot in the air to force the teen to stop the car and a second time at the car tyres. However, investigators found that one of the two bullets shattered the car’s rear window, penetrated the headrest of the driver’s seat and hit the teen in the back of the head, while the second was found wedged in the entrance of a hostel where the 16-year-old’s car stopped. If the ballistic analysis shows that the second bullet came from the 34-year-old officer’s weapon, it means he lied about firing a warning shot.
A second finding is footage from a security camera that caught part of the police car chase that proceeded the shooting. Describing the video in question, Theofilos Alexopoulos, lawyer of the teen’s family, said that during the pursuit, the 16-year-old drove onto the train tracks which caused his vehicle to rotate around its axis and stop. This refutes the claims of the officers involved in the chase that the teen made a deliberate U-turn to ram the officers’ motorcycles.
Meanwhile, the hospital where the teen is being treated said on Thursday his condition remains “critical,” bearing “severe craniocerebral injuries” as a result of the bullet that hit his head. He underwent surgery to remove the bullet and has been intubated, Ippokrateio Hospital added.
