Biker dies in crash after family outing

A local biker was killed in an accident in Limassol over the weekend, with police saying human factors played a primary role in the road victim’s fatal fall into a ditch.

According to local media, 33-year-old Omiros Charalambous from Palodia, Limassol district, was spending time with his family at a rural campground on Sunday afternoon when he left the site on his motorcycle after 5pm.

A few hundred metres away from the site, according to reports, Charalambous lost control of his motorcycle and flew over the handlebars.

Police said Charalambous was riding his motorcycle around 5:15pm, heading south along the Agros-Limassol rural highway, when under circumstances pending investigation he lost control of the vehicle.

Reports said Charalambous was driving fast at one point, when he lost control near a right turn and struck the guardrail with major force. His motorcycle then overturned, causing him to be violently ejected from his seat and fall into a ditch from a height of about ten metres.

He was rushed to the Emergency Room at Limassol General Hospital where doctors on duty pronounced him dead on arrival.

Police said the incident was still under investigation while traffic department director Michalis Michail said it appeared that the biker was going fast when he approached a right turn at the Kalo Chorio-Gerasa milepost.

MIchail said Charalambous was killed instantly, while the motorcycle helmet he was wearing was “literally smashed to pieces.”

“Even though he had his helmet on, that wasn’t enough to save him because the impact was very violent,” Michail said, adding that police will do whatever possible to ascertain the exact circumstances of the accident.