Developments are unfolding rapidly around the shocking case of the little girl found dead on Eden Beach in Palio Faliro, following criminal charges filed against her mother and the scenarios authorities are examining regarding her actions. Heavy criminal charges have been filed against the 32-year-old Algerian mother of the girl found dead days ago. The case file was forwarded to the Athens First Instance Prosecutor’s Office, where it was studied by the competent criminal prosecutor, resulting in charges for one felony and one misdemeanor.
The woman has been charged with:
• Premeditated murder in a calm mental state against a minor family member (felony), and
• Continuous domestic dangerous bodily harm against a person unable to resist (misdemeanor).
The case file was immediately forwarded to the investigator, who is called to issue an arrest warrant, as the prosecutor’s office has already given its consent. With the issuance of the warrant, the prescribed formal procedure for her arrest will follow. According to information, the case file includes not only her own claims about what happened, but also testimony from a neighbor who reportedly referred to previous incidents of abuse, an element that was decisive in filing charges for domestic violence. The 32-year-old is expected to be brought before the judicial authorities, most likely tomorrow.
Three scenarios authorities are examining
Initially, the 32-year-old woman from Algeria told police that the child was injured in the bathroom of their home in Kato Patisia, she panicked, thought the child was dead, and since she had no legal residence documents in the country, decided to leave it on Eden Beach in Palio Faliro. However, she later reportedly changed her statement, saying the child fell and was injured in the sea, not earlier. Her confession to police appears full of contradictions, and authorities are now examining all scenarios.
The first scenario suggests the child was seriously injured in the head in the bathroom, with the mother, fearing deportation, leaving it on the beach. The second scenario suggests the child faced serious health problems, couldn’t walk properly, and she wanted to “get rid of it,” according to forensic pathologist Dimitris Galenteris. Moreover, the child had water and sand in its lungs, indicating it drowned in shallow water. Thus, it’s not ruled out that she left it in the sea intending for it to die. The third scenario suggests the child was injured, but the mother didn’t realize the seriousness of the situation. She then went for a walk on the beach with the children and there discovered the child was unconscious. In this case too, the mother is suspected of leaving it to die helplessly on the beach.
Meanwhile, authorities are investigating what she was doing on the beach for so long late Saturday night, as she arrived in Palio Faliro at 9:30 PM with her three children and was again captured by security cameras around 2 AM Sunday. The two older children of the family became tragic witnesses to the most inhumane behavior from their own mother.
Palio Faliro: The timeline, the prosecutor and everything the mother claimed
It should be noted that evidence leads to different conclusions from what the child’s mother claims, as there are serious indications that the death was a criminal act, according to what the forensic examination revealed, and according to Dimitris Galenteris, who spoke to ERT News and Nina Kassimati. “Water and sand were found in the lungs,” he said characteristically, emphasizing that “this alone indicates drowning, and specifically on a beach, not in open sea.”
Mr. Kalenteridis spoke of clear disagreement between the findings and the mother’s version, who maintains that the child fell in the bathroom, was injured and lost consciousness, before she transported it to the beach. As he said, “the injuries found on the skull were caused while alive, but are not connected to brain function disruption,” so they don’t support the scenario of losing consciousness from a bathroom fall. At the same time, he referred to “serious facial injuries,” which however, according to him, “have no relation to the death mechanism” and don’t confirm the mother’s claims. Mr. Galenteris also pointed out the existence of a chronic pathology, which is expected to be further investigated. As he noted, “the question arises as to whether the child was healthy and if this specific pathology can be connected to the mother’s motive to get rid of it.”
“We are facing an abhorrent act,” he noted emphatically, calling for thorough investigation of the death circumstances through the investigation. “What the mother says doesn’t hold up. She must start telling the story as it really happened,” he concluded.
Timeline of the arrest
Developments are rapid regarding the case of the three-year-old girl found dead last Saturday on a beach in Palio Faliro. The woman with the stroller appearing in the video footage was arrested and, as proven, is the child’s mother, of Algerian origin, who was illegally in the country. She claimed the little girl had an accident at home and left it on the beach to avoid arrest.
Coast Guard personnel and homicide department officers are transporting evidence they collected from the apartment in Kato Patisia. Specifically, they found the slippers the 32-year-old wore Saturday night, however authorities couldn’t find the black and white dress the child’s mother was recorded wearing in the video. Meanwhile, photo albums and SD memory cards have been collected.
The evidence will be transferred to police crime laboratories. Authorities were inside the apartment for more than eight hours along with the prosecutor. As part of the investigation, they spoke with all tenants and owners present in the building today to gather any evidence that could help fully clarify the case.
Her statement wasn’t completed – She spent the night at Flisvos Coast Guard
Meanwhile, the 32-year-old remains at the Flisvos Coast Guard Station. Her statement won’t be completed yesterday and for this reason she spent the night there and today will be brought before the prosecutor for the charges to be formally announced. At the same time, very important questions remain unanswered regarding the child’s time of death, whether she left home while still alive, in a semi-unconscious state, or if she was already dead when the 32-year-old transported her with the stroller to the coastal area and finally left her in the sea.
“I was afraid because I have no papers” the mother claimed
New documentary video captured the Algerian woman’s movements on the afternoon of last Saturday, the moment she left her home in Patisia with her three children and the little girl in the stroller to reach the beach. Two hours later, a kiosk camera recorded the mother and her children in P. Faliro with the little girl having a hat pulled down over her face, perhaps wanting the mother to hide the injuries already on her head. Shortly after, she was recorded by another camera abandoning the empty stroller in a local park, and departing with her other two children by taxi.
When arrested, she reportedly claimed to Coast Guard and Security officers that the little girl, who couldn’t walk well, was injured at home from a fall, and fearing potential consequences because she had no papers, instead of seeking hospital help, she went and left it in the sea. When asked by police if she felt the child’s body was warm when she left it in the sea, she reportedly answered positively.
Georgios Kalliakmanis, Honorary President of the Police Officers Union of Northeast Attica, noted: “She said the child had been injured earlier in the bathroom. She said it fell in the home bathroom and hit the bathtub, which is why it had bruises and a bump on its forehead, which the forensic pathologist said was indeed from an earlier injury, but wasn’t what caused death, because according to the forensic examination, death came from drowning.”
The 32-year-old was located through video footage, leaving P. Faliro by taxi. Coast Guard personnel initially located the passenger the taxi had dropped off earlier at the location. Through the hotel he went to, they identified his details and found he was a tourist from Israel, who was now in another foreign country continuing his vacation.
The Coast Guard spoke with him via WhatsApp and he indicated the point where he had taken the taxi in central Athens. The Coast Guard went to the taxi stand on Ermou Street and with help from other drivers located the driver who had taken the fare. He in turn led them to Patisia, to the point where he left her with her two children, outside the apartment building where she lived, and the location was placed under discreet surveillance from evening.
In the morning, police noticed some movement from the woman, who was preparing a bag and the other two children and came down to take a taxi. There they feared she would leave again and so they intervened and brought her to GADA and subsequently to the Flisvos Coast Guard Station, which is conducting the preliminary investigation.
Vassilis Kikilias, Minister of Maritime Affairs & Island Policy, publicly congratulated Coast Guard personnel for their immediate and methodical action, stating: “Congratulations to the personnel of the Saronic Harbor Authority, the Flisvos Coast Guard Station and the Directorate of Security and Protection of Maritime Borders of the Coast Guard for their rapid and methodical work in solving the tragic case with the minor girl’s body in Faliro.”
She had been involved in child endangerment exposure in 2022
The 32-year-old had made repeated asylum requests with rejective decisions, while in 2022 she was charged with exposing a minor to danger. Then, a neighbor in another apartment building where she lived downtown had called the Immediate Action unit for a little boy who was alone at the building entrance. When police went, they found the then 2-year-old boy alone and her inside her apartment where she declared she hadn’t realized the child had left. She was arrested but released free on prosecutor’s orders, while even earlier there were at least 2-3 domestic violence complaints about the Syrian father abusing them.
On July 13, just two weeks before the incident with her daughter, another call was made to police from her current address where she lives with a Greek man, about intense baby crying, but the police who went to the scene found nothing reprehensible, nor injuries to the children.
