Athens police hunt 89-year-old gunman after two shootings wound five

An 89-year-old man turned two of central Athens’ routine public buildings into scenes of panic, opening fire first at an EFKA social security office and then at the Appeals Court, leaving five people wounded and police scrambling to find him.

The first attack struck the Single Social Security Entity branch in Kerameikos, at 4 Keiriadon Street, where the gunman fired a shotgun and wounded an employee in the leg. He then took a taxi across the city center to Kyrillou Loukareos Street in Ambelokipi, where he opened fire again inside the Appeals Court. Four female court clerks were hurt in the second shooting, and court employees told ERT that their injuries were only slight, a detail that underscored how much worse the outcome could have been.

Authorities evacuated the courthouse after the gunfire and launched a manhunt for the suspect, who was described by Greek media as 89 years old. Police said he left the shotgun at the scene, along with letters addressed to newspapers, and then fled on foot. The unusual age of the gunman made the attack especially striking, but the broader public-safety shock came from how quickly one armed suspect moved between two heavily used government sites in the middle of a European capital.

The case has also sharpened questions about access to weapons and the vulnerability of ordinary civic buildings. A social security office and a court are places where people expect paperwork, queues and routine, not armed violence. The choice of targets suggested a possible grievance against public institutions, but police had not established a motive as they searched for the man and examined the letters he left behind for clues to whether the shootings stemmed from a personal vendetta, a protest or something else.

For Athens, the episode exposed how fragile the sense of safety can be in dense downtown districts where administrative life unfolds in close quarters. A shotgun, a taxi ride and two attacks in quick succession were enough to disrupt two institutions, evacuate a courthouse and send police into pursuit of a suspect whose age was almost as unsettling as the violence itself.