A crucial role in the development of the Vorizia massacre case is expected to be played by the testimony of an eyewitness to the incident, who happened to be visiting the area during the bloodshed. This is a reliable and impartial source, as this man does not belong to either of the feuding Kargakis and Fragiadakis families and found himself caught in crossfire that also hit his car. It’s worth noting that this testimony was taken by police officers just hours after the massacre in the Heraklion village. According to cretalive, the witness is a Cretan who doesn’t live on the island but had traveled there for a wedding. On the day of the massacre, he wanted to take a drive to Zaros, but never imagined what was about to happen. “If it had been ten points higher, it would have hit me in the stomach and we wouldn’t be talking here now,” he reportedly told police according to the local media outlet.
“Many people opened fire on him”
Specifically, the 65-year-old witness was crossing the main road of Vorizia, coming from Loghria and as he describes, while moving toward Zaros, about 100-200 meters from the Monument, he saw approximately 15 people gathered on the right side of the road. At the same time, he saw a black shiny pickup truck, as he describes, with dark tinted windows, moving in the opposite direction at high speed. The 65-year-old slowed down to let the black pickup pass and then everything began.
As the local website reports, the witness describes that at the moment the black pickup reached the level of those gathered, he saw weapons being raised toward the car from the crowd and they began shooting toward the vehicle. “I definitely identified a Kalashnikov, mainly from the sound, the characteristic ‘rattling’ it made, while in total there must have been four to five weapons, as I managed to see, one of them was long, like a rifle. The others must have been pistols because there were bursts with few shots,” he reportedly said characteristically. Regarding the pickup truck, he couldn’t see how many people were inside, as its windows were tinted.
The moment of the 56-year-old woman’s murder
Additionally, the 65-year-old in his testimony describes that as soon as he realized the shooting, he ducked his body toward the steering wheel and made maneuvers to get away from the scene. While fleeing, he managed to see 56-year-old Evangelia Fragiadakis fall.
Specifically, the eyewitness said that before he ducked, he saw a woman wearing a colorful brown dress fall down, while next to her was a man on his knees who appeared wounded. He also testified, always according to cretalive, that before the woman fell to the ground, she had raised her hand and was pointing something at the opposite balconies. She was obviously pointing to where the fire from the opposing family was coming from, where the son-in-law of the deceased Fanouris Kargakis was reportedly located and was shooting with the Kalashnikov at the opposing family.
As he reports, the shooting continued for 2-3 minutes, stopped briefly and then gunshots were heard again, as if the episode was continuing, as he estimates.
However, in his testimony he doesn’t mention seeing shots fired from the black pickup with tinted windows, although he considers it certain that there was an exchange of fire.
As the local media reports, the 65-year-old reportedly testified that “I didn’t observe anything like that (i.e.: Kargakis or someone else shooting from inside the pickup). I assume something like that happened since there was obviously an exchange of gunfire and the people in the group who were on foot, among whom were the woman and man who were wounded, I believe they weren’t shooting at each other. All of them were shooting at the black car and based on logic I believe that whoever was in that car would have also shot back at them. I didn’t notice any other people involved. There were people on the balconies, on the left side as I was going, but I can’t say if they participated.”
