Officer shot ‘at Grigoropoulos’
A coroner told a court in Amfissa, northwest of Athens, yesterday that the policeman’s bullet which killed 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos in December 2008 ricocheted off a cement bollard but had been fired in the direction of the youngster, not up in the air. Christos Lefkidis was giving evidence on the first day of the trial of police special guards Epaminondas Korkoneas and Vassilis Saraliotis. An attempt to try the two men last month was aborted after the public prosecutor had to withdraw from the case. Lefkidis said that Korkoneas was holding his gun about 1.5 meters above the ground when he fired toward where Grigoropoulos was crouching. He rejected the policeman’s claims that he fired into the air, saying that the bullet recovered from the teenager’s body contained a dent on its side, not at its tip. Korkoneas alleges that he fired twice into the air and that his gun also went off as he attempted to holster it. The trial continues tomorrow.
