Police Investigating Links Between Nicosia and Limassol Gun Murders

The murders have raised police suspicions over a possible vendetta at play and police have stated they are on high alert, although there is no further information on expected incidents.

Police on Wednesday morning began intensive investigations into the murder of the second victim, named as Alexis Mavromichalis, who died after being shot in his home in Nicosia.

An investigation is meanwhile underway into a similar execution-style shooting in Limassol which claimed the life of 55-year-old Thanasis Kalogeropoulos.

According to police, 45-year-old Mavromichalis, aka Alexoui, was shot with a single bullet around 9pm when he stood out on the balcony of his flat in Acropolis.

He was rushed to Nicosia General hospital to be treated for the wound to his left abdominal area but succumbed to his injuries shortly after midnight.

Police are looking into whether the assailants were snipers and have said the crime appears to have been professionally executed.

About 10 minutes after the shooting a burning car was found in the area of Kotsiatis, and police are also looking into whether the car is connected to the murder.

The vehicle had been reported as stolen earlier in the month but bore no number plates and so far no conclusive evidence has been found linking it to the crime, police told state broadcaster CyBC.

Chief of police Stylianos Papatheodorou on Wednesday, said a car which had also been found aflame in Limassol shortly after Kalogeropoulos’ murder, had since been definitively linked to that crime.

Mavromichalis was well-known to authorities having been called into court for questioning in several murder cases in Cyprus over the years.

The murder of Mavromichalis came a day after the murder of Kalogeropoulos in Yermasogia and police are aware the men were familiar to each other. The extent of their connection, and its link to their murders, is being examined.

According to the police, six people have been questioned and CCTV footage has been collected and is currently the main focus of the Limassol investigation’s efforts towards finding a lead to the perpetrators.

The killing of Kalogeropoulos also had the marks of a well-planned operation police said on Tuesday.

The identification of the shooters is complicated by the fact that they wore hoods, according to eye-witness accounts.

Kalogeropoulos was gunned down in broad daylight in Limassol on Monday and had been struck by 10 bullets, a post mortem showed on Tuesday, while it was reported later that it is unclear how many bullets he received.

Police confirmed the victim had been shot with an automatic weapon and a pistol.

The autopsy on Kalogeropoulos showed that a severe head injury and injuries to vital organs from gun wounds were the cause of death.

The post-mortem was carried out by state pathologists Angeliki Pappetta and Orthodoxos Orthodoxou. During the post-mortem, two bullets were removed from the body.

Police had said they were on high alert after the daylight murder of Kalogeropoulos on the busy Amathountas Avenue and were very concerned about further bloodshed.

Kalogeropoulos was gunned down on the Yermasogia street on the way to his morning swim at a beach he frequented along the Limassol coastal road, after having dropped off his daughters at school.

Source: Cyprus Mail