The arrest of Roula Pispirigou, 33, on Wednesday, charged with the murder of her nine-year-old daughter was preceded by a detailed police investigation based on testimonies from nurses, staff and medical examiners at the hospital in the western city of Patra where her daughter, Georgina died in late January.
Pispirigou, who is in custody after being transferred to Attica Police Headquarters (GADA) in Athens, will appear on Monday before the prosecutor.
Pispirigou’s estranged husband is also expected to be summoned by the prosecutor in order to further establish the circumstance’s surrounding Georgina’s death as well as the mother’s two other deceased children.
According to the postmortem toxicology results, the 9-year-old child had received ketamine, an anesthetic drug often used in animal surgeries, which had not been prescribed by her treating doctors.
As stated in the case file, “the only person who was in Georgina’s room for the last 20 minutes of her life, before the side effects of the drug kicked in, was her mother”.
Georgina died at noon, with her mother informing doctors at 2.30 p.m. that her daughter suffered cardiac arrest. A hospital nurse testified to police that she saw the accused approaching her in search of a nurse, Kathimerini reported.
The nurse further testified that the way Pispirigou walked as well as the fact that she did not call for help initially gave her the impression that she wanted to ask her for a sheet or something similar. The nurse also said that the oximeter that had been placed on the child in order to notify staff in case of a drop in pulse had been mysteriously removed.
Staff also said that a day before the death, Pispirigou had told them, referring to her daughter’s heart condition, that they “had seen nothing yet” and that “the big episode has not taken place yet”
Among the list of incidents that raised the suspicions of doctors and nursing staff was that Pispirigou had asked if there were security cameras in the rooms.
It has also been reported that whenever Georgina experienced convulsions, bradycardia or other serious issues, she was alone in the hospital room with her mother.
Her death occurred two days after the girl’s father, Manos Daskalakis, the estranged husband of Pispirigou, had left the hospital.
