The dead little girl from Faliro was one of the “invisible children.” Those who have no homeland, no one sees them, no one cares, and they only become visible once they are dead. The thread of answers about what happened to the child began to unravel last Friday, just before 7 a.m., when the girl’s mother, along with her two other children, tried to flee her home, sensing that the release of her photo and the kiosk video featuring the three kids would – sooner or later – bring authorities to her door.

The Claims

As of late Friday night, it was still unclear how the 3-year-old girl ended up dead on the beach of Edem (“Paradise”). The mother claimed the girl had been sick the previous Saturday and had fallen repeatedly in the shower. “She couldn’t stand on her feet,” she reportedly said in her preliminary statement. However, the bruises on the child’s face, combined with her appearance in the kiosk video, have led investigators to consider foul play. The mother has a previous charge for child endangerment, which authorities are taking into account.

The 32-year-old woman was an illegal immigrant from Algeria reportedly living in a Kato Patissia apartment with an elderly Greek man, although it’s unclear whether he was present during the critical hours last Saturday. The father of the three children is also missing. He is a 43-year-old Algerian man with a heavy criminal record, including a robbery arrest in 2021, drug charges in 2022, and three incidents of domestic violence. Authorities believe he is no longer in Greece.

By Friday night, neither the mother’s partner nor the children’s father were officially under investigation. Authorities believed only the mother knew the truth about the child’s death. It’s possible that the two older children may have witnessed or understood something about what happened to their sister, but due to their young ages – 4 and 5 – approaching them is challenging and requires the help of child psychologists. Experts are already trying to speak with them to find out what they may have seen or heard on that fateful Saturday. Even recalling what their mother told them about the nighttime walk from Patissia to Faliro could prove valuable.

However, the case could not move forward until the identity of the child – born and died in Greece – was confirmed. According to asylum service records, the 32-year-old mother first applied for asylum on January 7, 2020, which suggests she arrived in Greece shortly before that. Her application was initially filed with the Attica Asylum Office and was rejected at first instance 11 months later and again on appeal in August 2022. She reapplied in April this year in Patras, but just days ago, on July 22, her case was closed again due to “silent withdrawal.” Practically speaking, the woman never received legal residency in Greece and lived undocumented for a long time.

According to her claims to authorities, this is the reason she abandoned the child on the beach in Palaio Faliro: she was undocumented, feared being held responsible for the child’s death, and thought she would lose her other two children.

She claims that last Saturday, the little girl – who, according to the forensic report, had a metabolic disorder – was unwell. “She had been vomiting since the morning and wasn’t eating properly,” said the mother, who, despite being in Greece for five years, says she speaks no Greek and gave her statement via interpreter.

“She fell in the shower and hit her forehead. Then she got up and fell again, hitting her side. She couldn’t stand. I poured water on her to revive her,” she allegedly told the coast guard and police investigators.

When asked why she didn’t take the child to the hospital, the 32-year-old responded that she was afraid to do so because of her undocumented status. What investigators are now trying to determine is whether her story is credible or if something else happened and the mother is trying to cover it up.

According to the coroners who examined the girl’s body, the cause of death was drowning. However, they also found multiple injuries to the face – forehead, eyes, lips, and nose – as well as visible bruises on various parts of the body. Were these injuries caused by falls, the mother’s efforts to revive her, or by severe beating? So far, only the 32-year-old mother knows the answer.

One possible scenario is that the child was indeed injured in the home bathroom, and the mother, in panic, abandoned her seriously hurt but still alive in the sea, where the tragic end came. The medical examiner confirmed drowning and even found sand aspiration in the lungs. The exact timing of this is unclear, and it’s not known why the child was left on the beach for nearly five hours.

One concerning detail from the surveillance video – which shows the mother abandoning the empty stroller – is that she was wearing her dress inside-out, indicating she had dressed in a hurry, perhaps because something urgent had happened just before. The child’s poor condition was evident as early as 9:30 p.m. at the kiosk, and the mother tried to conceal it, covering her face with a hat and dressing her in a swimsuit – something she didn’t do with her other two children. Do these actions suggest premeditation? Did she plan to end her child’s life? These are the questions that law enforcement must now answer.

It is worth noting, however, that this was not the first time the 32-year-old woman had come to the attention of the authorities. In 2022, she had been charged with child endangerment after leaving one of her children, then 2 years old, alone, and the child was later found at the entrance of the apartment building where they lived. A case file had been opened at the time, but she was released following a verbal order from the prosecutor.

The Discovery

A decisive role in unraveling this tragic and still-unresolved case was played by footage from security cameras in the area where the little girl was found. These recordings revealed the mother’s movements.

From the very beginning, coast guard and police officers analyzing the footage from the day the child was found dead noticed a woman moving around Palaio Faliro with two children and a baby in a stroller, behaving very strangely. The child in the stroller was wearing a hat — despite it being nighttime — had its face covered, and its completely motionless body posture suggested that, at best, the child was asleep.

This footage was recorded at 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 26. Five hours later — at 2 a.m. on Sunday — the same woman was recorded at a different location, now accompanied only by the two older children, pushing an empty stroller, and getting into a taxi. Identifying this woman became the top priority for investigators.

The case began to unravel when investigators managed to track down the taxi driver through an Israeli tourist. The tourist had taken the same taxi just before the woman and was able to identify the driver for investigators, as he had called the ride through an app and knew who the driver was.

The driver recalled the route and informed authorities that he had dropped off the Algerian woman in the Patissia area. Since Thursday (July 31), police had been discreetly monitoring the area. On Friday morning, they detained the woman as she was exiting the apartment building where she lived.

According to reports, the 32-year-old lived in an 8th-floor apartment with a Greek man. Neighbors said the woman appeared to care for her children but had little to no interaction with the community. One of them stated that he had been questioned by the authorities and recognized the woman from a photo they showed him.

The Testimony

The most revealing account of what happened on the day of her arrest came from a shopkeeper who helped the authorities locate her. According to his description, “plainclothes officers had come to my shop early in the morning, and together we reviewed the store’s security camera footage looking for the woman in question. They wanted to confirm that she was in the area and that she lived on that specific street.”

As he recounted, at some point he spotted the woman leaving the apartment building. “She was holding a bag of trash and had her two small children with her. I told the officers, ‘I think that’s the woman you’re looking for.’”

He noted that the police acted with complete discretion. “They approached her very politely, without alarming the children. They simply asked her to come with them. When she saw them, she realized she’d been found. I saw it in her face — she made a grimace, as if annoyed that they had caught up with her.”