The purpose of the defendants was “to find as few Martians as they could” so that they were numerically superior “in order to kill”, testified a friend of Alkis Kampanos who was present at the time of the wild fan attack, in which the 19-year-old student lost his life and two were injured more people from his company.

The witness, whose examination continues for the 17th day the trial of the 12 defendants at the Mixed Jury Court of Thessaloniki, reacting with the “instinct of survival”, as he said, caught up and escaped, running as far as he could. “I heard screams of pain and ‘help’,” he said, and that’s why he alerted store patrons to call an ambulance.

Unraveling the tangle of memories and trying to bring to his mind the images from the fateful night of February 1, 2022, the 20-year-old first mentioned how the group of five friends ended up on the steps of the building on Th. Gazi (now Alcibiades Kampanou). “We got together and went to the apartment building, to the stairs. It was cold and there were indentations at the site. We had been there two more times,” he said, while describing the moment when the perpetrators approached them, he said: “At one and a half meters we saw about ten people in front of us. One asked “what team are you?”. I answered “Mars” and then they rushed at us.”

Realizing “what was going to happen”, as he testified, he jumped from the terrace to the left and through Plastira Street went down towards Papanastasiou Street. “Obviously I felt danger and terror,” he continued in his testimony, stressing that he was unable to distinguish either faces – “they were dressed in black and had their facial features covered”, he said – or what they were holding in their hands. He clarified, however, that one to two people were outside the three cars used by the defendants to reach the scene of the attack.

“I was terrified”

“I have images from the incident. The people who were in front of me, the moment I leave. I don’t have a flow of events,” the 20-year-old witness said at another point in his testimony. As for Alkis, he pointed out that he cannot know “what happened on the steps”. Regarding the police investigations that started immediately, he said that “at first I was terrified, I didn’t know how to behave. Then we went to the Department and I calmed down.”

During the examination of the 20-year-old by the defense and as he was asked why he did not go to help Alkis and the other two injured, among whom was his twin brother, Alkis’ parents reacted. “How many murders to do?” said the father, while the mother said: “what’s wrong with the child?”

The trial continues with the examination of the same witness, who is the last (26th) in the relevant list of the indictment.