A mother whose three children all died in suspicious medical circumstances over the last three years was led before an Athens examinining magistrate on Thursday, following her arrest in the city of Patras on Wednesday on a charge of murder. She requested and received an extension to testify and was transferred back to the Attica General Police headquarters in Athens, where she will be detained until her testimony
The order to prosecute the 33-year-old woman came from an Athens prosecutor, who charged her with the premeditated murder of her eldest daughter, Georgina, aged nine. Toxicological and histological tests revealed ketamine – reportedly not prescribed by any doctor – in the body of the girl, who died in January 2022.
In Patras, a first instance court prosecutor had asked that she be arrested on grounds that she is likely to commit further offences.
The woman was taken to the Attica General Police Directorate’s homicide division on Wednesday evening.
Georgina’s death in 2022 had been preceded by those of her six-month-old sister Iris in 2021, and of her 3.5-year-old sister Malena in 2019, and sparked the start of investigations into the cause of death of all three children, which had baffled doctors.
According to media reports, a full medical report on the causes of death of all three children is expected later on Thursday.
The case has drawn great public interest, as it appears to be the first case of its kind in recent memory.
According to ANA sources, the police report sent to the public prosecutor regarding Georgina’s death noted that the young girl had consumed a lethal quantity of ketamine that caused her death within the space of 20 minutes at most, during which time she was alone with her mother. It also noted that the last visit to the girl’s ward by either a doctor or nurse was an hour before symptoms of poisoning appeared, while her medical file showed that no quantity of ketamine had been prescribed.
The police have also requested the medical files from all the hospitals where she had been treated and interviewed all medical personnel monitoring her health, as well as the coroner that carried out the autopsy and found that her death was due to “lethal poisoning by a pharmaceutical substance”.
“Specifically, from the toxicological exams that were carried out on her blood post-mortem, the presence of the pharmaceutical substance ‘ketamine’ was detected in toxic-lethal quantities. With respect to the precise time before death occurs after administering ketamine, this depends on various factors and mainly the method of administration. The time period varies between a few seconds and 20 minutes, depending on the method used. From our service’s investigation, it transpired that the only person in the room with Georgina in the last 20 minutes of her life, before the side-effects of the drug appeared, was her mother,” the police report said.
SOURCE; AMNA
