Lawyer debates path of bullet
The lawyer defending Epaminondas Korkoneas, the police special guard who shot dead teenager Alexandros Grigoropoulos in Exarchia, central Athens, in December 2008, argued in court yesterday that the fatal bullet was fired into the air and not toward the victim. «There is no question that Korkoneas’s shot caused the death,» said lawyer Alexis Kougias. «It’s also certain that the bullet ricocheted. What we are challenging is the point where it richocheted.» Kougias argued that the coroner’s assessment that the bullet struck a cylindrical cement bollard was wrong because he placed the victim and Korkoneas in the wrong positions. «The point of impact is somewhere else, high up, but they ignored it because it did not fit in with the positions they had worked out,» said Kougias. Coroner Christos Lefkidis rejected this, saying that the marks on the bullet were on its side, not at its tip, indicating the gun was not fired into the air. He also said traces of the bullet’s casing were found on the bollard.
