Police in Paphos have arrested a 33-year-old Bulgarian woman for her possible connection with the recent theft of a bronze statue created by artist Yiota Ioannidou.
The ‘girl with the hula hoop’, installed at the Hani tou Ibrahim in the heart of the coastal city since 2019, was stolen in the early hours of Friday.
CCTV cameras in the area had recorded two culprits approaching the sculpture, forcibly removing it from its base and dragging it to a spot where it was not recorded.
That’s where the Police believe the vehicle in which the statue was loaded had been parked.
The motive of this unprecedented action was probably the sale of copper – the material of which the statue is made.
Ioannidou, who was very distressed that her work was destroyed in such a way, had put a €1,000 cash reward for information helping the police to make an arrest.
