Over $75,000 has been raised to help bring home a Greek Australian man brutally attacked on the Greek island of Rhodes, news.com.au. has reported.
Charlie Kathopoulis, 43, was in Rhodes completing his national service for the Greek military and helping to settle his late father’s estate when he was left with horrific injuries after two men broke into his residence.
According to Charlie’s sister, Michelle, CCTV footage from the attack shows Charlie approaching the men outside to tell them to leave, but he was badly beaten on the head with a steel bar and stabbed multiple times in the throat and chest.
“There was a blood trail to his bedroom and the bed and pillows are completely sodden in blood,” Michelle told news.com.au.
Charlie sustained major head trauma, skull fractures, an explosive fracture to the jaw, a critically damaged windpipe, a broken collarbone and punctured lungs from the attack.
He remains in intensive care at Rhodes Hospital, while two men have since been arrested for the attack.
The Kathopoulis family are now by Charlie’s bedside in Rhodes where, Michelle said, her brother was initially non-responsive with head injuries leaving him in a medically induced coma for 35 days.
The family is not sure of the condition of Charlie’s windpipe, his larynx, his vocal chords, or his neurological state.
He has been accepted at Royal Darwin Hospital for life-saving surgeries, but it is going to cost the family upwards of $450,000 to get him to Australia via Aeromedical retrieval from Rhodes, direct to Darwin.
In response, they have started a GoFundMe to help raise funds. So far, $76,098 has been raised of a $200,000 goal.
“We are very humbled, grateful, gobsmacked, surprised, emotional, and cannot thank people enough – we have been so very moved by this,” Michelle said in response to the donations.
Source: news.com.au.
