Mother: ‘I want the truth about my son’s death in quad bike crash on Cyprus holiday’

Victim: Andres Arbelaez-Loayza
Matt Watts17 September 2015

A mother has called for answers over her son’s death on a hired quad bike in Cyprus, after uncovering what she claims are “serious discrepancies” in the official police report.

Andres Arbelaez-Loayza, 28, was killed in a head-on collision with a car in Paphos while on holiday with his girlfriend. Last week his mother Alba travelled to Cyprus to track down witness testimony and obtain CCTV which had not been handed over in advance of her son’s inquest.

She accepts his death, in July last year, was accidental, but is not confident about the police investigation. “I cannot bring my beautiful son back to life but I can make sure the truth about how he died comes out,” she said.

Andres, a former pupil at St Aloysius school in Highgate who worked as a scaffolder, was on the seventh day of his holiday when he was asked by a hire firm if he would swap the car he had leased for a quad bike. He agreed, but was later involved in a collision in Cholrakas, an area popular with UK tourists. His girlfriend suffered a broken foot.

Police say he hit a car and did not have a helmet on. But Mrs Arbelaez, a community worker from Camden, tracked down witnesses and CCTV footage from a restaurant which she believes disproves this. “The police report does not tally with what I have been told. I met people who tried to save Andres’s life.

“I found the driver who hit my son with his car, and a taxi driver who saw it. They all said he was wearing a helmet. They also told me the police took half an hour to arrive, and the ambulance did not come for 35 minutes.”

Mrs Arbelaez presented her evidence to the coroner in Cyprus, who agreed to adjourn last week’s planned hearing. The London-based Consul General for Cyprus confirmed police and medical reports will be handed to UK authorities for review. Mrs Arbelaez wants to know whether her son’s death could have been avoided if he had been warned of the road conditions and if emergency services had responded more swiftly.

She also wants the inquest to examine whether her son — who did not have medical insurance — was given proper hospital care. The inquest will be heard in February, when Mrs Arbelaez hopes she will get “justice”.

She said: “I don’t want his death to be for nothing. Maybe I can make sure no other mother has to go through what I have.” Her quest was funded by Andres’s friends, who organised a fundraising football tournament in the memory of the Arsenal supporter.

A spokesman for the Cypriot Consul-General said: “We have no reason to hide or delay anything. We agree that hire firms with these types of vehicles should look at how they inform tourists of traffic laws and conditions on Cypriot roads. It is a safe country in terms of roads.”

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