For at least ten years, the 89-year-old man who shot five people at a social security office and a courthouse in central Athens this week had been telling anyone who would listen exactly what he intended to do. Nobody stopped him.
Sworn witness testimony obtained by iefimerida.gr paints a portrait of a man consumed by paranoia and a festering grievance over pension contributions he believed had been stolen from him — a "ticking time bomb," in the words of a relative who shared his apartment in Ano Patisia, who described watching a calm and generous family man gradually surrender to a deepening darkness.
For a decade, the suspect reportedly vowed to kill the officials he held responsible. He believed his former wife in America had placed a curse on him.
He raged against social security clerks who, he claimed, had insulted him by calling him a "Janissary" — a historical slur implying betrayal of one's origins.
His grievances were specific, personal, and long-rehearsed.
The warning signs were not new. In 2018, P.K. left live ammunition on a prosecutor's desk. "I've done my part," he reportedly told the official. "Next time, I'm bringing the shotgun."
He was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward for 23 days and his weapons were confiscated. Somehow, he re-armed himself.
On the morning of the attacks, he performed what witnesses described as a series of farewell rituals.
After drinking his coffee, he left in a trench coat, returned twice — once for a forgotten item, once to ask his relative to toss his brown hat from the balcony — then stopped at a local coffee shop where he tore a 50-euro note in half in front of staff. "I won't need this anymore," he said. "Where I'm going, I'll eat and drink for free."
After shooting five people and fleeing to Patras, where he was arrested, he told investigators his ultimate plan had been to travel to Strasbourg and take his crusade to the European courts.
The pensioner now faces multiple felony charges.
His case has opened an uncomfortable national conversation about how a man with a documented psychiatric history and a decade of explicit violent threats against public institutions was able to walk into two government buildings with a loaded weapon and find nobody waiting for him.