Two young lives lost. Two grieving families. And a country whose institutions failed to act in time — despite knowing the danger.

This is the devastating reality unfolding in Cyprus, as the parents of Kyriakos Oksinos and Styliani Giorgalli testified this week before the Investigative Committee examining vehicle recalls. Their testimonies shine a harsh light on a state apparatus riddled with negligence, passivity, and disregard for human life — a failure that cost their children everything.

Kyriakos Oksinos died on January 24, 2023, driving a BMW E46 — a model included in BMW’s global recall program for defective Takata airbags since 2020. But according to his father, the family was never notified by the BMW’s representative in Cyprus.

The vehicle, purchased in 1999 as a gift to Kyriakos’s mother, was listed in international safety bulletins. Still, no phone call, no registered letter, not even an email reached them. The only attempted contact, said the father, were two unanswered calls to a landline number — one that was always monitored by a receptionist.

“We only found out after his death, when a traffic officer told us the injuries didn’t match the nature of the crash,” he said. An autopsy revealed the airbag’s metal components had exploded toward Kyriakos’s face. The airbag had not deployed normally. The steering wheel had detached. Metal fragments pierced the car’s interior like shrapnel.

Maria Loui, Kyriakos’s mother, described the unbearable realization: “The word Takata entered our lives only after our son’s death.”

She began researching online after police investigators mentioned his facial injuries. What she discovered horrified her — a global recall scandal that had claimed lives around the world and resulted in over 100 million recalls. “And yet in Cyprus,” she said, “everyone remained silent.”

>>Takata Airbags: Three-Member Committee to Investigate Vehicle Recall Failures<<

She found a 2019 report from a Detroit-based journalist citing government documents that referred to severe injuries in Australia and Cyprus due to faulty Takata airbags. That was years before Kyriakos’s death — yet no public warning, no campaign, no accountability ever materialized.

Even after meeting with the newly appointed Transport Minister in April 2023, who promised urgent action, nothing changed. Two months later, the ministry's Director General — who had failed to provide answers — was transferred to a different department. “Two children had to die for the issue to reach the surface,” she said. “That’s what breaks me.”

Styliani Giorgalli was only 21 when she died in a car crash on October 21, 2024, driving a Toyota Yaris imported from Japan in the early 2000s. Her father, Yiannakis Giorgallis, testified that he had no idea about the Takata issue until he saw Maria Loui speaking publicly.

After her death, he checked with local dealerships and online recall platforms — but the system didn’t recognize the vehicle, as it was a “gray import” not officially recorded by Toyota Cyprus. Months later, in January 2025, he received a message from the Road Transport Department: the car was under recall. Too late.

Giorgallis went to the Toyota dealership in Paralimni with the ownership papers for all three Toyotas in the family. Two were recalled. The third — his daughter’s — was also affected, but they refused to replace the airbag, saying he’d have to pay because it was a Japanese import.

He removed all the airbags from their cars himself, for safety. “I brought the airbag that killed my daughter to the dealership and asked them: how reliable is your system if it says only the passenger side needs replacing?”

The technician couldn’t answer. “This is the airbag that killed my daughter in Avgorou,” Giorgallis said.

Police investigators confirmed what the parents feared: the damage from the crashes was not consistent with fatal outcomes. In both cases, the Takata airbags exploded violently, ejecting metal fragments into the driver's body.

In Kyriakos’s case, the airbag’s structure had detached and landed in the back seat. In Styliani’s, the cylinder from the airbag's inflator had pierced her chest, causing fatal hemorrhaging. Initially, paramedics thought she had been murdered due to the size of the wound.

Shockingly, Cyprus had already experienced a serious Takata-related injury in 2017. Yet the government failed to act.

According to police testimony, a serious injury in 2017 involving a similar BMW model had prompted technical testing by the Department of Electromechanical Services — but the findings were never shared with criminal investigators. No systemic recall campaign followed. One of the investigating officers bluntly stated: “No one told us to look for a malfunctioning airbag. We didn’t even know it was a factor.”

Even after identifying faulty airbag components, the state allowed high-risk vehicles to remain on the road. One such vehicle — the very car that killed Kyriakos — was still listed as “high risk” in February 2025, two years after his death, yet no immobilization order had been issued.

The Investigative Committee will next hear from the current and former Directors of the Road Transport Department. But for the families, the damage is done.

“This was a global scandal,” said Maria Loui, “and in Cyprus, everyone whistled indifferently.”

Yiannakis Giorgallis said government authorities were notified by the EU about Takata risks as far back as 2000. Still, nothing was done. “Did it have to happen to us for anyone to care?” he asked.

It’s a question that now haunts a country where institutional neglect, broken systems, and bureaucratic indifference proved as deadly as the airbags themselves.