Car park gunmen bent on cash delivery hit
Two men arrested for shooting at policemen in a northern Athens supermarket car park had been about to rob an armoured van scheduled to collect the day’s earnings when officers challenged them, police said on Saturday. The suspects, Socratis Tsirimiagos, 41, and Albanian national Spiro Papas, were arrested on Friday and Saturday respectively in connection with the June 1 shootout outside the Vassilopoulos supermarket in Nea Erythraia. Nobody was hurt in the exchange of fire that followed a police attempt to inspect the suspects’ pickup truck, while the gunmen managed to escape from the scene of the incident. Police said the truck had been loaded with a stolen motorbike – to be used as a getaway vehicle – an ax to smash open the cash box and a vat of water with which to wash the loot should the box prove to be rigged with a paint bomb designed to render stolen banknotes unusable.
