NEWS

MP’s attacker is charged

A deranged car mechanic who, on Friday, tried to assassinate Athens Mayor-elect Dora Bakoyianni was charged on Saturday with attempted murder and firearms offenses. Giorgos Sandalis, 35, who had been repeatedly treated over the past five years for paranoid schizophrenia, was arrested just after the shotgun attack on the conservative MP in her car. He will appear before a magistrate today. Bakoyianni, 48, escaped Sandalis’s shot – which wounded her driver in the neck – by pure coincidence. Unaware of the gunman’s presence beside the car, she had been talking on her cell phone and, as the shot rang out, ducked to rummage through her handbag. She suffered minor cuts from glass fragments. Her police driver, Giorgos Lyberiou, 35, was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. Yesterday, archbishop Christodoulos called Bakoyianni’s escape «a miracle.» He added that people in Greece are no longer at risk from November 17 terrorists, but rather «from lunatics who are loose on the streets.»

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