Irish teenager's death sparks safety probe into Greek holiday rentals

Alex McKee was seventeen years old when he picked up a showerhead in a bathroom on the Greek island of Kimolos on August 9th. The current ran through him instantly. He died before anyone could reach him.

The bathroom was described by those who knew it as outdoor and rudimentary—the kind of structure you find in older holiday homes built decades ago and rented out season after season to tourists. McKee had been on the island for barely three days. He and his family came regularly; his mother, Iphigenia, was born there, and they stayed in the same stone house, more than fifty years old, that had belonged to relatives for generations.

When McKee did not emerge from the shower, his mother went to check on him. She felt the same electrical surge when she touched the showerhead. A doctor on the island, Agapitos Xanthis, later told Greek television that the family was fortunate the incident had not claimed two lives. "I told her to immediately turn off the mains," he said, recounting her account of what had happened. The postmortem examination, conducted at a hospital in Piraeus on the mainland, confirmed the cause of death as electrocution.

Greek police launched an inquiry focused on the building's water heater and the wiring that fed it. Officers told the Guardian that the fusebox appeared to lack a safety valve—a basic protection that should have prevented current from flowing through the showerhead. "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 islands. The investigation soon widened to include the electrical installation certificate that had been signed off on in 2024.

That signature belonged to Konstantinos Vendouris, the mayor of Kimolos. Vendouris is a professional electrician. When news of the death reached the island—a place with fewer than one thousand residents—he expressed shock and said the tragedy had plunged the community into mourning. But the fact that he had certified the very installation that killed McKee created an immediate and serious question about responsibility. The family's lawyer, Stelios Voudouris, told Open TV that "the current mayor faces huge criminal responsibility." The family signalled it would be pressing charges.

Before his death, McKee had been recognized in Ireland for his work on an innovative communication system designed for people with nonverbal autism, a project he had developed with two classmates. He was a fifth-year student in Cork and had competed in the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition earlier that year. Colm Burke, an Irish politician representing Cork North-Central, paid tribute to him, calling him "a really talented young person with his whole life and huge career ahead of him."

The incident has exposed a broader vulnerability in Greece's tourism infrastructure. The country depends heavily on visitor revenue, and numbers are expected to climb again this year. Yet electrical standards in seasonal holiday rentals across the Greek islands remain inconsistent and poorly monitored. A teenager's death in a shower has forced the question: what other homes are renting out to families without basic safety protections in place?