Paphos District Court ordered the eight-day remand of the 37-year-old father of the three-year-old British boy who died yesterday at the hotel where his family was staying on holiday in Chloraka.
The father appeared before the court without a lawyer. Relatives said the tragedy the previous afternoon and the family’s psychological state had not given them the opportunity to arrange legal representation for him.
A translator explained to the father that Police were requesting his eight-day detention. He raised no objection, and the court proceeded to issue the eight-day detention order.
A Police representative told the court that five statements had been taken so far, with further statements still to be obtained from people who were at the scene, as well as a supplementary statement from the father himself.
The father faces charges of causing death through a reckless, careless or dangerous act, failing in his duty as head of the family, and failing in his responsibility as a person who had care of another person.
A post-mortem on the child’s body will be carried out at midday at the mortuary of Nicosia General Hospital by forensic pathologists Aggeliki Papetta and Orthodoxos Orthodoxou.
The British family had arrived in Paphos for their holiday only the previous day at dawn and had been due to stay at the hotel in the Chloraka coastal area until the 25th of the month.
At 6pm, according to Police investigations, the boy was playing with his father in the corridor on the fourth floor, where their room was located, when, under circumstances still under investigation, he fell through an open corridor window.
The boy landed on the hotel’s main veranda on the first floor and was fatally injured. An ambulance was called to the scene, but when paramedics arrived they found the child was not responding. He was taken to Paphos General Hospital, where doctors on duty pronounced him dead.
The scene was cordoned off by CID Paphos officers, who began investigating the circumstances that led to the incident. Statements were taken, while authorities are also examining hotel camera footage. According to philenews information, some of the footage appears to show the boy falling at 6:02pm.
The British couple have another child, a five-year-old girl, who is also with them on the holiday. The woman’s parents are also in Paphos with the couple.