US court awards $17.5mn to family of slain Cypriot

By Jean Christou

THE FAMILY of a Greek Cypriot doctor shot and killed by New York police officers in 1993 has been awarded $17.5 million in damages after a five- year legal battle.

A US court made the huge award after ruling the New York police department liable for the shooting of Lenas Kakkouras, 29, by plain-clothes officers on February 26, 1993.

The hospital to which he was taken, which left him lying handcuffed in its emergency room for two hours without treatment even though he had gunshot wounds, was also found liable.

Kakkouras was shot by the two plain-clothes police officers in the Mount Vernon area of New York when he failed to stop at a road block.

The road block had been set up by police after a bomb explosion earlier in the day at the World Trade Centre.

Kakkouras was on his way to a friend’s house when he took a wrong turn.

According to police reports, officers spotted a grey car near the road block “acting in a suspicious manner”.

They claimed they identified themselves and that Kakkouras then struck one of them with his car and attempted to run over the second.

The second police officer then fired his weapon four times, hitting Kakkouras twice. The Cypriot was then taken to New York hospital where he died of his wounds after a five-hour operation.

It emerged later that Kakkouras had been mugged a month before by two men disguised as police officers.

The police officers who shot him were initially cleared by a local court but later found guilty by a state court after an appeal by Kakkouras’s family.

Kakkouras, a refugee, went to the US in the summer of 1990 and specialised in paediatric neurology at the New York Medical College.

Yesterday, his two brothers spoke of their lasting sadness at his brutal death. “Lenas will always be alive in our memories as he was full of life and love,” George Kakkouras told journalists. “The money changes nothing for us.”

Iacovos Kakkouras said: “The pain and suffering he went through in the two hours before he died cannot be compensated for by any amount of money.”

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.