Greek police arrest 89-year-old suspect after Athens shooting spree wounds at least four

# Greek police arrest 89-year-old suspect after Athens shooting spree wounds at least four

A gunman opened fire at a social security office and later at a courthouse in central Athens on April 28, 2026, leaving several people hurt before police detained him near Patras.

Greek police say they have arrested an 89-year-old man after a shotgun attack in central Athens left at least four people wounded and sent officers scrambling across the capital and beyond.

The evidence packet describes a two-step incident. The suspect first opened fire at a social security office in the Kerameikos area, where he wounded an employee in the leg. Officers who arrived at the scene treated the injured man, but the suspect got away. He was later believed to have reopened fire at a courthouse elsewhere in central Athens.

That second attack appears to have caused most of the public alarm. Television footage showed ambulance crews removing at least three people from the courthouse. The head of the Athens Judicial Employees Union said the gunman fired at the floor inside one of the court offices. Three female court employees were slightly wounded by ricocheting shotgun pellets, while a fourth woman was taken to hospital without physical injuries.

Police said they found the shotgun after the courthouse attack. The suspect was later detained near Patras, about 210 kilometers west of Athens. That arrest brought an end to a search that had moved from a social security office to a court building and then across a sizable stretch of Greece.

The motive is still unclear. State broadcaster ERT reported that the gunman had left envelopes with documents after the courthouse shooting, implying the papers were tied to his reasons for acting, but the packet does not confirm that detail as official fact. Authorities have not said whether the attack was personal, political or linked to a dispute with the institutions involved.

The age of the suspect makes the case unusual even before the details of the shooting are considered. An 89-year-old man carrying out an attack with a shotgun in two separate public buildings is striking in a country where firearm ownership is tightly regulated and gun violence is relatively rare.

That rarity matters because it changes the public significance of the event. In places where shootings are frequent, a case like this might be absorbed into a grim pattern. In Greece, according to the packet, the incident lands as a shock: a daytime attack on public institutions that would normally be associated with bureaucracy, law and routine rather than violence.

The social security office and courthouse are also symbolically important targets. They are places where citizens encounter the state in ordinary life, which is part of why a shooting at both locations caused immediate concern.

For now, police have a suspect in custody and a basic sequence of events, but the reason behind them remains hidden. That leaves a case defined by injuries, a swift arrest and a larger question about what could push an elderly man into such an unusual act of violence in the middle of Athens.