PAPHOS, Cyprus (AP) — A British man on Tuesday pleaded guilty to a charge of negligence in the fatal fall of his 3-year-old son from a hotel window during a family vacation at a resort in Cyprus.
He sat quietly in the courtroom’s rear seats with his mother and father, while his lawyer entered the plea on his behalf.
The 37-year-old defendant, who The Associated Press isn’t naming in accordance with local law, will again appear in court on Oct. 5 for
mitigation and sentencing, Paphos District Court judge Froso Christodoulides said. Cypriot law prohibits a defendant from being named before this occurs in court proceedings.
The man's lawyer, Alexandros Alexandrou, said he would ask the court to lift travel restrictions against his client so that he can rejoin his wife and 5-year-old daughter in the U.K. until sentencing.
The court last month allowed the defendant to attend his son’s funeral back in the U.K.
The defendant and his family were reportedly a few days into their vacation at Cyprus’ southwestern resort town of Paphos in July when the boy fell from the hotel’s fourth-floor window.
The circumstances of the fall remain unclear.
Alexandrou said his client decided to plead guilty late Monday to the single charge of causing death due to negligent and careless actions, primarily to avoid a lengthy trial and spare his family from reliving the circumstances of the boy's death with detailed evidence presented in court.
A long trial would mean that the man is “again a victim of this tragedy,” Alexandrou said after the hearing.
“The most important thing for him is to return to his family,” he said, adding the fall was ultimately an accident.
The charge carries a maximum of four years’ imprisonment and a minimum of a fine. Alexandrou told The Associated Press the court should take into account previous similar cases in which defendants received a fine or a suspended sentence.
A judge can suspend a sentence if a defendant is sentenced to three years’ imprisonment or less.
Cyprus Attorney General George Savvides last week denied a request to drop the case on humanitarian grounds.
Alexandrou said he would appeal any sentence that gives his client the maximum penalty. The lawyer refused to give any details about his client's identity, saying even authorities have avoided mentioning the man's name in court.
Cyprus, a former British colony, is very popular with tourists from the U.K., who make up a significant portion of the roughly 4 million holidaymakers the island nation received in the last few years.
