IT was with a heavy heart that missing Janka Kovacova’s three friends flew out of Larnaca airport to return to Slovakia during the early hours of this morning.
Petra, Maria and Kristina, left the Grecian Bay hotel where they had been employed since June at 10pm to catch their 1am flight home.
However this was not how it was supposed to happen.
As Kristina said on Monday, “four of us were supposed to be on that plane, not just three of us”.
The 20-year-old Slovak was referring to the absence of the trio’s schoolmate Janka, who disappeared without a trace from outside the five-star hotel during the early hours of August 17.
Earlier in the day Maria said the women were all packed and ready to go.
“We are counting the hours until we leave,” she told the Cyprus Mail.
Asked how she felt to be leaving under such difficult circumstances she said: “I’m feeling happy that tomorrow [today] I’ll be with my family and friends in Slovakia but on the other hand I feel very anxious. As long as I’m here, I’m in the centre of everything. When I’m there, who will call to tell me what’s going on?”
Regarding what would happen to Janka’s aunt, Helena, who came to Cyprus on Sunday to help find her missing niece but who spoke not a word of English or Greek and relied on the women to communicate between her and the outside world, Maria said the police had found an officer who spoke Polish.
“We received a phone call from the police today [yesterday] and were told they’d found a policeman who could speak Polish and that could help Helena,” she said.
Petra explained that the 64-year-old, who is also Janka’s godmother and refuses to give up hope that the younger woman will be found alive, lived in an area in Slovakia near the Polish border and so was also able to understand Polish.
In the two weeks the pretty brunette has been missing, her family has not had any word from her. An eyewitness told police she spotted a young woman fitting Janka’s description being pushed into a white van at around the time when the young woman reportedly telephoned a male colleague, whom she’d been out with for a drink 40 minutes previously, and said that she was being followed by a man wearing a black shirt driving a white van.
Famagusta police have remanded two suspects in custody, one of whom is due to stand trial in October for the rape of another Eastern European woman. The men are due for release today unless police have more evidence to convince a court to re-remand them.
Forensic evidence retrieved from the white van was due back from analysis yesterday but investigating officers were unavailable for comment as to what those results had revealed.
