Teenage gunman remanded in north after car dealership shooting
A 17-year-old boy who shot two people at a car dealership in northern Nicosia was on Wednesday remanded in custody for two days.
The shooting occurred on Tuesday morning at the Uluhan car dealership in Omorphita, with the boy making off on a motorcycle after the shooting.
Both victims, the dealership’s owner and his son, were hospitalised, and a manhunt ensued, with the boy not being located for a full 11 hours.
Police officers initially located the motorcycle and the clothes worn by the boy at a nearby block of flats shortly after midday, but after raiding the block of flats, were unable to locate him.
He was eventually found at a bakery shortly before 9pm. He is a Turkish national who had arrived in Cyprus on Tuesday morning before firing the shots.
A subsequent search of his person turned up two handguns. He will next appear in court on Friday.
According to news website Haber Kibris, the boy was asked by the judge if he had a lawyer and responded by saying “I want to call my mum”. He made no further comment.
The shooting is the latest in a steady flow of shootings in the north which are believed to be linked to the underworld, and provoked disquiet among many local residents, with Turkish Cypriot Nicosia mayor Mehmet Harmanci warning that “our cities … our workplaces, our lives are under threat”.
“In our country, which is filled with cameras everywhere, mafia thugs roam freely with weapons in their hands. Money laundering flows right before our eyes. In this tiny region where the banking system is entirely under control, it is impossible for these things not to be detected,” he said.
He added that the Turkish Cypriot community “needs courageous people … people who will cut off their pipelines and not surrender to the huge sums of money they feed”.
To the north’s ruling coalition, he said, “get out immediately, you have handed the country over to the mafia”, before warning, “get out, because the snake you nurtured will bite you, too”.
Earlier, in response to a previous wave of such incidents last year, Turkish Cypriot opposition political party CTP ‘MP’ Sami Ozuslu had suggested that the north be renamed as the “hitman’s paradise of northern Cyprus”.