Family still in agony
No closer to truth of son’s tragedy
WHEN his son was found bloodied and motionless, lying in the middle of a country road last year, the toughest part for George Mavridis was the mystery behind how he got there.
Twelve months on and Mr Mavridis has had to come to terms with the fact he may never truly know what happened to his son, aspiring hip hop artist and young father Andrew Mavridis, on the morning of May 2 last year.
“What the relationship was or what happened that day is as much of a mystery now as what it was then,” he said.
Suffering “major” head injuries in the incident, the 28year-old who was once full of life is stuck in a wheelchair, can no longer speak and has limited movement down the right side of his body.
“We’ve got a series of hand movements and gestures and that, that we’ve come up with,” George Mavridis said.
Police charged 21-year-old Mina Hanna with dangerous driving causing grievous bod- ily harm in June last year for his part in the incident.
Despite the fact he is due to appear in Southport District Court again later this month, Mr Mavridis says he has given little thought to criminal court proceedings.
“From what I’ve been able to gather from Andrew’s friends, that name (Mina Hanna) never ever came up in conversation,” he said. “To be honest we haven’t really fo- cused on that side of it. We’ve let the police worry about that and let them do their job.
“Our job is more looking after Andrew now.
“Nothing that comes out of court or all of that on the legal side is going to make any impact on what’s happened – there’s no point us even focusing on that at the moment.”
The former carpet cleaner recently quit his job to devote more time to care for his son.
The family have some outside help but predominantly, the task falls to George and his wife Dora who, together with their daughter Katherine made an emotional plea in May last year in an attempt to have witnesses to the incident come forward to police.
Mr Mavridis says Andrew has regular contact with his three-year-old son but doctors are unable to tell the family how much the 28-year-old will improve, if at all.
“I suppose ... you just cope, just manage it,” he said. “There’s no other choice is there?”
Mina Hanna is scheduled to appear in court again on June 23.