Doctors at a Piraeus-area hospital were forced to amputate the leg of a 31-year-old police officer who sustained serious injuries to his left leg from a naval flare fired during hooligan violence last Thursday night, during a top-flight men’s volleyball game between Olympiacos Piraeus and Panathinaikos Athens.

Physicians opted for the amputation of the left lower extremity due to irreversible ischemic damage and extensive muscle necrosis in in the officer’s thigh.
The unfortunate law enforcement officer, serving in the riot police unit (MAT), remains intubated at the Nikaia State Hospital’s ICU, as medical staff continue fighting to keep him alive.

He is in a medically-induced coma and according to the latest hospital bulletin, “remains in critical condition, hospitalized in the ICU under sedation and mechanical ventilation.”

The police officer was severely injured from the highly incendiary flare lodged in his thigh. An 18-year-old teenager was arrested two days later and charged with firing the flare gun, of a type stored aboard vessels.

Police said the suspected admitted to firing the flare.