Crime a ‘novelty’ in Sparta
Customers in Sparta’s Enallax cafe are all talking about a robbery the previous day at one of the town’s main supermarkets, each group providing a slightly different version of the details (such as whether the robber thrust a gun at the cashier’s head or her stomach), but the general consensus is that the perpetrator was a Greek – although someone was certain it was a Romanian. They had just experienced what for many of its inhabitants was an unheard-of occurrence in their sleepy town – an armed robbery in broad daylight – or at least what seemed to have been. Two days later, the local Laconian Observer newspaper carried the story on its front page. A man wearing a hood entered the Panayiotopoulos supermarket at 7.30 p.m. and robbed the cashier of 3,200 euros. The man was described as being 25-30 years old, about 1.80 meters tall with short, blond hair and dressed in black. Kalamata’s Eleftheria newspaper said the search for the culprit had spread outside Laconia to the neighboring prefectures of Messinia and Arcadia. Sparta is a pleasant place when its streets are filled with the sound of children leaving school, high school kids heading for a cafe before going home to their homework, and office workers stopping for an ouzo after work. Today, however, the mood is thoughtful as everyone wonders how such a thing could have happened. «It must have been some poor guy,» said kiosk owner Sarantos Liontis, 37, to his audience of customers waiting for cigarettes. «He probably owed lots of money and was driven to it.» The kiosk is just a few meters from the scene of the crime in Palaiologou Street, the main drag. Liontis didn’t see the robber. «No one realized what was happening at first. Then the police turned up with sirens blaring. Robbery is an unknown word here,» he said. Yiannis Varelas, a 37-year-old civil servant, gives another insight. «Do you known how many houses have been robbed? Five years ago they broke into my sister’s home in (the nearby village of) Magoula on the night of her wedding.» «The same thing happened in Xirokambi on the night of a wedding. Didn’t they know that you always get someone to guard the presents on a wedding night?» said Babis, a young farmer, who has good news for the group: The robber’s whereabouts has been discovered. «That’s what I heard from someone in the know. It’s a matter of days before he is arrested. He’s a local man, but I can’t remember his name.» Sparta’s police station is quiet. Grigoris Bakaras, head of the Laconia Police Union, is not surprised at people’s concern. «Robberies are a rare phenomenon in Laconia. I haven’t seen an armed robbery in the 20 years I have been here. In any case, it’s only a matter of time before we solve it,» he said. According to Bakaras, the robber was armed with nothing more than a mobile phone, which the cashier took for a gun and was panicked into handing over the cash. This article appeared in the April 2 edition of K, Kathimerini’s color supplement.
