Shocked, the taxi driver who transported the mother and her two older children home from Palaio Faliro — where she had abandoned her 3-year-old daughter in the sea — described those moments inside his vehicle.

Speaking to Star, the taxi driver said he encountered the mother and her children on Poseidonos Avenue, after midnight. The woman was wet and walking with her two young boys. She told him she spoke French and, as he describes, she didn’t appear distressed when she got into his car.

“They were wet, and I felt sorry for them. I was finishing my shift, and they asked me to take them to Liosion Street. On the way, she told me she was from France. She didn’t seem to be in a bad state. The kids looked a bit exhausted because she was dragging them along… That’s why I stopped to pick them up,” the driver said.

“I kept thinking, what is a woman doing alone at the beach at two in the morning — and wet, no less,” he added.

“She was playing with her phone, the kids were sleeping”
The driver hadn’t realized all this time that the woman at the center of the police investigation was the same person who had gotten into his taxi that night.

“When we arrived at their home, I looked back to see if she had left anything behind. The seat was wet. She had sat in the middle and was playing with her phone. The kids were asleep, completely exhausted. She hadn’t secured them properly — they were on the sides, and she sat between them,” he noted.

“If I had known, we would’ve saved her together”
Once he learned the woman’s identity and her horrific act, the taxi driver was overwhelmed.

“I was trembling inside. If I had known what had happened, I would’ve told her to go back with me — the child might not have died yet. We would have taken her to the hospital immediately,” he said.