Murder suspect remanded for eight days

POLICE yesterday announced that 40-year old Georgios Ballaskas will be remanded for eight days, after shooting 22-year-old Arestis Aresti from Paphos at point-blank range on Thursday night and killing him.

Ballaskas, who handed himself in to police, claims that he had shot Aresti in self-defence while the two were quarrelling.

It has since emerged that the two men have had an ongoing feud for a long time and Thursday’s events came about after they had decided to deal with the problem in person.

Aresti’s brother Christos, who had driven the victim to the scene, told police that the two men had come to blows before Ballaskas pulled out a shotgun and shot Aresti in the chest.

While Ballaskas fled, Christos took his blood-soaked brother to the Paphos General Hospital where doctors announced him dead on arrival.

Ballaskas went to the Paphos police station later in the night and confessed to the shooting, but said that he and Aresti had been fighting beforehand and that he too had sustained injuries.

Speculation in the media has been rife over the exact reason behind the two men’s feud. The suspect reportedly claimed in Court yesterday that Aresti had been spreading rumours throughout Paphos that he was intimately involved with “people close to the victim”.

Previous reports claim Ballaskas had been receiving threatening phone calls from Aresti and that the young man had also been harassing the suspect’s wife and daughter.

Arestis’ funeral took place at 3pm yesterday at the Apostolos Pavlos Church.

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