Woman ‘close to family’ arrested in toddler kidnap

By Peter Stevenson Published on February 21, 2013
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abduction, arrest, Cyprus, forensic evidence, kidnapping, Stavros Styllis, Ypsonas

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POLICE arrested a 35-year-old woman yesterday for the kidnapping of 18-month-old Stavros Styllis in Limassol last Friday after forensic evidence implicated her in the abduction, police spokesman Andreas Angelides said. 

The woman reportedly comes from the ‘family environment’. 

Angelides said that police were looking at the circumstances of the abduction but that investigations indicated that more than one person was involved. “The woman, who is close to the family, was being questioned at the time the toddler was still missing which would indicate she had an accomplice,” he added.

Reports were also confirmed yesterday that in December, a portion of pudding the toddler’s grandmother was about to feed him contained pieces of broken glass and crushed medicine. 

The episode happened roughly a fortnight after the young boy had been released from the intensive care unit of Makarios Hospital after being in a coma. 

He had been hospitalised from November 20 till November 26, 2012, suffering from encephalitis. The glass and medicine were discovered in the child’s food when his grandmother tasted it just before she was about to feed him. She noticed it did not taste normal.  

The food serving was checked by a laboratory abroad which confirmed the cream contained pieces of broken glass and other health hazards. 

Styllis was taken from his grandmother’s verandah in Ypsonas on Friday morning, sparking a massive hunt for the kidnapped toddler across Limassol, with Cypriot police, a police helicopter, British bases police, members of the National Guard and Civil Defence, Ypsonas municipal workers and members of the public all involved in the search for the boy. 

With news of the little boy’s disappearance spreading like wildfire across the internet, by midday on Friday, there were few people in Cyprus unaware of the family’s ordeal. 

By 3.30pm, a widow who went to Ypsonas cemetery to light a candle for her husband found the little boy crying outside a shed, eight hours after he had been taken.