Call for tighter checks on Greek tourist accommodation after death of Knocknaheeny student

The death of a Cork teenager while holidaying abroad has led to a call for tighter regulation on tourist accommodation.

Alex McKee, who was 17, died last week after he was electrocuted by a showerhead in his rented accommodation on the Aegean island of Kimolos in Greece.

The teenager, who was due to begin his Leaving Certificate year at Terence MacSwiney Community College in Knocknaheeny in the coming weeks, was in Greece visiting relatives with his mother and sister.

As reported in The Guardian, the teenager is said to have died instantly after picking up the showerhead in an “outdoor and rudimentary” bathroom at the rented premises.

A doctor on the island, Agapitos Xanthis, told Greek TV that “we are lucky there weren’t two deaths as a result of electrocution”.

Dr Xanthis said Mr McKee’s mother had described feeling a similar surge when she called him for help, with him telling her to “immediately turn off the mains”.

The family had been on the island for three days when the incident occurred on August 9.

As the birthplace of his mother, Iphigenia, Mr McKee and his family visited regularly, staying in the same stone house built more than 50 years ago.

Greek police told The Guardian that an inquiry was now focused on the building’s water heater and a possible fault in the wiring.

“The house has been cordoned off and we have requested an independent expert to come and inspect the wiring,” said an officer based in Syros with oversight of the Aegean.

“It is thought the fusebox may not have had a safety valve,” the officer said.

The teenager’s body was transported to the mainland where a postmortem conducted at a hospital in Piraeus had attributed the cause of death to electrocution.

Alex, a fifth-year student in Cork, had won the prestigious Ombudsman for Children's Office (OCO) Award at the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition earlier this year, along with two classmates, for developing an innovative communication system for people with nonverbal autism.

Fine Gael Cork North Central TD, Colm Burke said Mr McKee was “a really talented young person with his whole life and huge career ahead of him”.

“Earlier this year, he put a huge effort into getting to that stage in the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition and was awarded for his efforts,” said Mr Burke.

Following the tragedy, calls have been made to ensure tighter regulation on electrical standards in accommodation rented out seasonally on Greek islands.

The mayor of Kimolos, Konstantinos Vendouris, said the event has impacted everyone on the island, which has a population of less than 1,000 people.

It later emerged that as a professional electrician, Mr Vendouris had signed off on the property’s electrical installation certificate in 2024 – a document that police said was also being investigated.

It is now understood that the McKee family will be pressing charges.

“The current mayor faces huge criminal responsibility,” the McKee family lawyer, Stelios Voudouris, told Open TV.