Hunting rifles are weapon of choice in ‘crimes of passion’

Most murders and other violent crimes are carried out with hunting rifles. Apart from the family tragedy near Volos, another multiple tragedy involving the use of hunting rifles was the murder of five hunters near Agrinion three months ago by a farmer who claimed he shot them after they argued with his father, who was upset that the hunters were trespassing on his land and scaring his sheep. On Christmas Day last year, a 48-year-old man in Dendropotamo near Thessaloniki shot and slightly injured three people, including a 16-year-old girl. A few days earlier, a 90-year-old man in Hania shot a 15-year-old Moldovan in the stomach after the latter tried to rob him. On November 9, Constantinos Kleitsinaris, 64, shot and killed his neighbor Thanassis Pasaoglou after an argument. In October, Yiannis Vestakis, 38, was found murdered in his car. He had been shot in the heart with a hunting rifle. In February of last year, a retired police officer shot and killed his wife with his hunting rifle. A month earlier, 25-year-old Athina Partheni was shot dead in front of her father by a former boyfriend, Ilias Alexandropoulos, 41. A family quarrel was given as the motive for the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Christos Roumeliotis by Dimitris Mazarakos, 44, in the village of Xerokambos near Arta. In the village of Agriani, a 42-year-old drug addict shot and killed a 66-year-old man in a botched robbery.