THE LARNACA criminal court yesterday sentenced 33-year-old Prodromos Hadjipanayi to 25 years for manslaughter and 15 years for the attempted murder of four people in Kofinou in March last year following a property dispute.
The two sentences will run concurrently the court said. The court’s decision was met with applause from the victims’ relatives.
Hadjipanayi had originally been charged with premeditated murder, a charge that carries mandatory life imprisonment if found guilty but the charges were changed after a plea bargain.
In total, he had pleaded guilty to nine charges but the court decided it would charge him with manslaughter and attempted murder.
Hadjipanayi was accused of killing Panayiotis Stavrou and injuring his son Giorgos Georgiou as well as three other people during a shooting rampage with a Kalashnikov assault rifle on March 23.
The father and son had been working on a Turkish-Cypriot house at the time, which appeared to have been at the centre of the dispute.
The 33-year-old defendant had been lobbying the Guardian of Turkish Cypriot Properties at the Interior Ministry to allocate the house to him but it was given to Giorgos Georgiou instead.
Hadjipanayi subsequently went to the local market where he shot and injured the owners, brothers Adamos and Panayiotis Lambrou – with whom he also had property disputes – and 37-year-old Katy Charalambous.
Trouble kicked-off inside the courtroom before the court’s decision as members of Stavrou’s family shouted obscenities at Hadjipanayi, resulting in a delay to proceedings. The courtroom was vacated until tempers mellowed and the court managed to deliver its sentencing.
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