It may have been 52 years since the treacherous coup of July 15, 1974, but for the family of 8-year-old Stavros Pidia and 62-year-old Margarita Theodorou, time seems to have stood still on that blood-stained morning in the Agios Ioannis neighborhood of Limassol. A grandson and his grandmother were shot dead in front of the entire family, who had gathered at the grandmother’s house for breakfast.

A story unknown to many, yet one that remains an indelible memory for a family burdened with unanswered questions about a crime that scarred everyone who was in the house on Milos Street, just a few meters south of the Agios Ioannis Police Station, where fierce battles unfolded between coup plotters and resistance fighters.

Margarita Theodorou’s grandchildren and Stavros’s cousins, Georgia Theodorou and Spyros Christodoulou, spoke to KYPE about what they remember, as well as what they learned later, regarding the tragedy that haunts the family, hoping to keep it etched in the collective memory of the region.

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“It’s a story I believe needs to be heard,” says Georgia Theodorou, whom we met along with her 87-year-old father, Neoklis Theodorou, who was dressed in black, noting that “ever since that tragedy, every July, my father always wears black.”

Any attempt to get a statement from Mr. Neoklis proved impossible, with his daughter explaining that his senile dementia prevents him from recalling details and referring us, by phone, to her cousin, Spyros Christodoulou, who was 11 years old at the time.

At the same time, she tells us that Grandma Margarita came to Limassol from the village of Eledio in Paphos, after her husband’s death, to help the families of her five children and her seven grandchildren, including Stavros, “a very good student at the 4th Limassol Urban School, who dreamed of becoming a pilot,” and with whom they grew up like siblings.

Living in neighboring houses with a shared courtyard, the family would gather during the summer months for breakfast and treats prepared by Grandma Margarita. This is exactly what happened on the morning of July 15, 1974—only this time, the coup was already underway, and a double murder was about to be committed.

Earlier, Spiros Christodoulou tells us, his uncle and father were called upon to pick up weapons and defend the police station, as they were Makarios supporters and members of AKEL, but since the weapons were very old, they chose to return home.

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“My father, who worked for the ‘Cyprus’ taxi company, pulled the car into the garage at home as the riots began, and he was hunched over, in the passenger seat, trying to connect a loudspeaker,” she tells us, adding that “my aunt, my grandmother, and all the babies were sitting on the veranda next door, listening to Makarios speak on the radio—obviously from a recorded speech of his.”

Around 9:30, he continues, a jeep appeared on Soranou Street and headed toward the Agios Ioannis police station; however, access to Archbishop Makarios III Avenue was blocked by barrels. “We heard voices from the police station asking who was inside the car, whose driver backed up, possibly to leave,” he adds.

They were wearing, he said, military uniforms; “we didn’t know if they were armed or if they were coup plotters, but then gunfire broke out, from the direction of the police station, with bullets hitting my grandmother’s house as well as the window of my father’s car—he was fortunately crouching down.”

“All of us who were on the porch threw ourselves to the ground,” he said, adding that Grandma Margarita and 8-year-old Stavros, who was holding a bowl of caramel cream in his hand, were killed by the bullets while they were inside the house.

The gunfire struck Stavros Pedia in the head and Margarita Theodorou in the heart and chest, while his mother, Nafsika, Spiros Christodoulou tells us in a trembling voice. I can’t forget, he continues, that “I was holding my cousin in my arms with half his head missing, and I was shouting at him, ‘My Stavros, what happened to you? My Stavros, wake up. And his eyes were open, and his hands and feet were trembling.”

His description is even more harrowing, as, as he notes, “almost half his head was gone; the baby’s brains were splattered on the walls, the refrigerator, and the ceiling,” adding that Stavros’s mother, Athinoula, crossed the street, went to the house across the way, and “was cursing at the police officers who were shooting.” “I was holding her by her dress, and I remember someone from the police station saying, ‘Go ahead and hit her,’ and I heard a voice say, ‘What are you going to do?’ while my aunt was screaming that they had killed her baby,” he added.

When asked about this, Spyros Christodoulou expressed the view that “there appear to have been coup plotters within the police force who followed my father and my uncle when they left there earlier and turned their guns on the house.”  He rejects the possibility that this was an unfortunate coincidence, since, as he points out, the house was in the opposite direction and far from the SUV that appeared in the area.

“My father took the baby, my grandmother, and my mother to Limassol Hospital, and an ambulance had been called, but the coup plotters did not allow it to reach the house,” she said. According to Georgia Theodorou, the SUV reappeared, and she believes they “came to take the bodies.”

Their fears were ultimately confirmed, since, as they told us, as soon as the lifeless bodies of Stavros and Grandma Margarita were transported to Limassol Hospital, they were taken by coup plotters in a jeep, with no one knowing where they would end up.

During the night, they add, the rest of the family remained hidden in Grandma’s house, while outside the police station “it was like a war zone,” as they vividly described it. “That night, we hung sheets to block the light from showing through, and we slept together on the tables. We heard gunshots, sirens, cars, and voices over loudspeakers telling us to stay home,” recalls Georgia Theodorou.

The anxiety over the fate of the family’s two members continued for days, since it was impossible to find any trace of them—or of Aunt Nausicaa, as Ms. Georgia tells us, adding that, about ten days later, “the priest at the Church of Saint Nicholas, who knew my grandmother, informed us that they had tried to bury them in a mass grave in Saint Nicholas.” “He told them they were his parishioners and buried them together in another spot, which he pointed out to us, while also informing us that Aunt Nausicaa was at Limassol Hospital, where she was being treated,”, he added.

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“What happened that day shattered us,” emphasizes Georgia Theodorou, who, as a five-year-old child, vividly remembers only “is the next day, when we had to clean up the blood and scrape Stavros’s brains off the walls.”

The two cousins note that the family never received any assistance from the government, any psychological support, and never received justice for the death of their loved ones. “It’s too late now. What are we supposed to ask for—justice? We know who these people are, and when I grew up, I asked and found out who the police officers were who had the guns and fired, but we never found out why other police officers didn’t stop them,”, says Ms. Theodorou.

In 2015, with the support of the Metropolis of Paphos, the family erected a memorial featuring busts of Stavros and his grandmother Margarita, in the community of Eledio, Paphos, where they hold their annual memorial service, as they did last Sunday, July 12.

On the somber anniversary of the coup, as Ms.Georgia, “it’s a routine for the family: we’ll get ready at 6:00 a.m. and be at the Agios Nikolaos Cemetery by 7:00 a.m., and afterward, we’ll go to the Resistance Memorial to lay wreaths.”

Although Stavros’s parents and other relatives who lived through those tragic events are no longer with us, among those who honor the memory of the two unjustly lost family members every year is Stavros’s younger sister, who was born seven months after his death and was named Stavri Theodorou Pidia.

The names of Stavros Pidia and Margarita Theodorou are included in the list of citizens who lost their lives during the treacherous coup and are inscribed on the Monument to the Fallen Resistance Fighters, across from the Church of Saint Nicholas.