A 31-year-old man suspected of killing Andreas Stylianou aka Americanos who was arrested on December 7 was remanded for an additional seven days on Friday.
The court approved the police request for renewal of the suspect’s detention order considering that to set him free would give him the opportunity to influence witnesses or flee to areas not controlled by the government.
Stylianou was killed on December 7 in Limassol after driving to the house of the 31-year-old on his motorcycle and firing several shots at the building.
The suspect told police that the victim, who had been a friend, had called him during the night, threatening him and his family, as he held him responsible for a search carried out by the drug squad on his car two days earlier where drugs were found. The 31-year-old said he heard the sound of a gun being loaded as he received the threats, so he subsequently left his house, got in the car and began patrolling the area.
Stylianou, he reported, then turned up on his motorcycle, stopped in front of the suspect’s home and fired shots at it with his pistol.
A collision of his car and Stylianou’s motorbike followed and Stylianou was killed.
When police arrived at the scene they found Stylianou’s dead body lying in the street next to his motorcycle. A handgun and five cartridges were also found in the road.
The findings of a traffic police report presented in court point to the car having collided with the motorcycle and dragged it some ten metres, further noting that the nature of the road, the path of the two vehicles and the speed at with they were travelling did not justify the severity of the collision. Therefore, police did not rule out the possibility that the driver intentionally killed him.
The 31-year-old denies he intended killing Stylianou and refuses to cooperate.
A 25-year-old family member of the suspect who was allegedly at the scene of the crime has also been arrested. The man testified that he had left the house at the time and gone to a kiosk.
Both the victim and the suspect had in the past attracted police attention in drugs-related cases.
