“Victim may have been lured here to avoid prying eyes”: 3 men beat another man (29) half to death in the entrance hall of an apartment building | News

“On surveillance images you can see how the victim, a 29-year-old man from Antwerp, is lured here by a man with a thin mustache.” Simon Fiers, spokesperson for the Ostend police, shows us an apartment building on Cardijnplein. Last year a man was so badly beaten here that he could hardly live to tell the story.

Cardijnplein is a spacious, quiet square with lots of greenery, surrounded by residential blocks. On October 21, 2025, a worker was quietly eating in his car around noon, when he suddenly saw three young men running away from the apartment building opposite him in the distance. One of them is holding a baseball bat.

“The worker suspected that something was going on in the building and went to see what had happened,” says Fiers. In the entrance hall he makes a disturbing discovery: a man lies on the floor with blood on his head. He was beaten up by the three men who just fled.

During the investigation, the police view surveillance images from the entrance hall of the apartment building. It shows how the victim, a 29-year-old man from Antwerp, follows another man with a hood and a thin mustache into the entrance hall. He has an orange bag. But as soon as they are out of view of the surveillance camera, a second man with a dark beard suddenly bursts in, carrying nothing less than a baseball bat. And a few seconds later a third companion appears — but he arrives just too late. The other two storm out again, with the baseball bat… and the victim’s orange bag.

The worker who sees them fleeing immediately calls the emergency services, who quickly arrive on the scene. Fortunately, because the man who was beaten up suffered severe brain damage and hovered on the brink of death for days, says Fiers. “He was in a coma for a long time and barely survived the attack. Moreover, he also suffered permanent damage.”

Perhaps the man with the orange bag was the victim of a robbery. But why remains unclear. Due to the severe brain damage, he no longer knows what was in the orange bag, or how he met the man with the mustache. “The victim has already been interrogated several times, but only remembers fragments of the facts. The investigation shows that we cannot rule out that it was a criminal transaction. But we want to catch the perpetrators of such serious violence quickly.”

The investigation also shows that the three men prepared their attack well. For example, they have been hanging around the apartment building on Cardijnplein half an hour before the facts. They are probably on preliminary reconnaissance.

One man may be able to tell more. Surveillance images show him walking back and forth for a while around the time of the incident while talking on the phone, right in the escape route of the suspects. He may have seen something, and the police would therefore like to speak to him.

So the investigators are looking for three men. The first suspect has a thin brown mustache and was wearing black New Balance sneakers at the time of the offense. The man with the baseball bat has a rounder face and a dark beard. The last man has a black beard and wears a black Adidas jacket.

All tips about these men or about what happened that day on Cardijnplein are welcome from the police on the free number 0800 30 300 or by email.

This investigation report was created following a collaboration between the Federal Police, the Public Prosecution Service and DPG Media.