Over 1,500 mourners gathered in the Thessaloniki suburb of Evosmos on Thursday for the funeral of 16-year-old Kostas Frangoulis, the Roma teenager who died in hospital on Tuesday after being shot by police last week.
“Today all of society must be united. Today we are all Roma,” Theofilos Alexopoulos the family’s lawyer said in a statement.
The Frangoulis family held a viewing at their home where community gathered to mourn over the open coffin, his head covered with a white baseball cap; some placed banknotes in the coffin as is Roma tradition.
Playing traditional mournful music and a favourite song of the teen’s, they formed a procession following the hearse to the cemetery for his burial.
Giorgos Stamatis, Greece’s Labor Ministry’s Secretary General for Social Solidarity and Fighting Poverty attended the funeral.
He is quoted by Kathimerini as saying “Today is a difficult day, a sad day. We bid farewell to a young person… who didn’t have time to live his life and leaves behind a young wife and child.”
