He no longer has feeling in his right leg and still has pain every day. Catering owner Jan Verhoeven from Best was stabbed two months ago after he caught a burglar. “It’s a miracle that I’m still here,” he says in an interview with Omroep Brabant. “They gave me more than ten bags of blood.” The impact remains great for Jan, his family and his catering businesses to this day.
Jan Verhoeven walks through his catering business in the Prinsenhof conference center in Best. He limps, because he can barely walk. He actually has to use a wheelchair. “In my right leg the nerves are all the way to the Philistines,” he says.
On April 10 around half past eight, Jan Verhoeven is in the hall center preparing for a funeral. “Suddenly we hear a bang and the door was half hanging,” the catering manager recalls. A man tries to break in. “The man was standing outside in a corner and when I asked him what he was doing, he took off on a bicycle.”
Jan decides to run after the man, he says, “I thought: what kind of nonsense is this, another idiot. I lose sight of him some distance away and I walk on to my other business, Grandcafé FF, to get sausage rolls for the coffee table.” And then he sees the man again. “I grab his bag from behind and it’s done within ten seconds.”
“Everything is one big blur.”
Jan is stabbed in his neck, twice in his stomach, under his collarbone and in his leg. “I don’t know how many times I’ve been stung. I haven’t had the need to read the hospital report yet.” The catering manager doesn’t remember much about the moment. “I know it happened and that I stumbled in. Everything else is a big blur.”
Later Jan hears how serious it all was. “I was in really bad shape. I had gone into shock and I had no blood left. They gave me more than ten bags of blood.” Agents who were the first to arrive later tell the catering manager that it is a miracle that Jan is still there. Everyone took the worst possible scenario into account, he says.
Jan still suffers most from his leg. “We had to cut it open from top to bottom to relieve the pressure. My arteries were severed.”
He still has pain in his leg every day. “I may never be able to walk normally again, they don’t know yet.” Jan no longer has feeling in his right leg because all the nerves are damaged. “I only have feeling in my foot and the cords of my toes. But the most important thing is that I am still here.”
The entrepreneur is in the hospital for three weeks. “In the first week I was in a lot of pain. I was given so much medication that I was in another dimension. That is very intense.” Jan can then go home and start his rehabilitation. “I didn’t want to go home at all. Just leave me in the hospital, I thought.” At that moment the feeling of security is completely gone.
Carefully and quietly, Jan is now trying to work again in his catering business. “It’s bizarre what this has done to the community. To this day, I am spoken to several times a day, hugged and people spontaneously start crying.” According to him, that is the biggest impact of the stabbing. A positive, but overwhelming impact. “You have to learn to deal with it.”
Immediately after the stabbing, a manhunt for the perpetrator began. A 42-year-old man from Oirschot is in custody as a suspect. He must appear in court for the first time at the end of July and the trial will follow later. “If the suspect’s lawyer speaks and argues for acquittal, I and the people around me will leave the room,” Jan said.
“My work is my hobby and my hobby has now been taken away.”
The consequences are major in business. “I have to deploy extra people everywhere because I have disappeared. And that costs a lot of money. But my work is my hobby and my hobby has now been taken away. But luckily I have a good group of people and they are doing great.”
When asked whether Jan regrets going after the man, he remains silent for a moment. “Yes, no… I regretted it, but not anymore. It’s in my nature. This week I heard something outside and I immediately went back to look. Then I get comments from my staff that I shouldn’t do that. I have to realize that they all carry a knife these days.”
Watch the video to see what happened on Friday morning, April 10, and the reactions to the stabbing: