The house of Karin van Oort (56) in the Waalstraat in Den Bosch was completely destroyed by fire. And she knows for sure: her ex is behind this. And he won’t leave her alone, Karin fears. “He is crazy and capable of anything.”
Without hesitation, Karin shows her burned-out house. The mess is indescribable. All the windows are out and everything in the house is burned, melted or blackened. You can hardly walk there because all the plasterwork has come down due to the heat. The roof at the back of the garden has been completely destroyed. The rooms upstairs are not burned out, but they are completely black from the smoke.
In the kitchen, a melted radio shows that the heat was enormous there too. The TV on the wall in the living room is burned and the couch is little more than a skeleton and some springs.
“I only thought one thing: the little one is upstairs!”
“My son and I were sitting there on the couch when suddenly there was a fire near the roller shutter,” Karin points out. “It went very quickly and I only thought one thing: the little one is upstairs!”
The 6-year-old boy was quickly taken out of bed and taken to hospital with breathing problems. “That shouldn’t have taken much longer,” Karin says. “That was crazy. I immediately went into survival mode. I also immediately banged on the neighbors door. Everyone had to get out.”
What remains is a desolate mess in the rental house, which is uninhabitable for the time being. But, the misery is not over yet. “My ex has sworn that he is going to do something to us. After 38 years I really don’t want to continue with him and now he says that if he isn’t happy, I shouldn’t be either. So he won’t let me have the house or the grandchildren either.”
“I know this fire is my ex’s doing.”
“He has vowed to grab me by the hair and shoot my six grandchildren. And then himself.” Because of the fire in her house, Karin knows that it is not just words, but that her ex is really capable of anything.
Last May, her 59-year-old ex Roland H. was arrested by an arrest team. He threatened Karin and her daughter with a gun and abused them in the house on Waalstraat, where they lived together for years. After the raid, a total of four firearms, a silencer, a brass knuckle, two knives and four axes were found.
H. was sentenced to nine months in prison and will be released next month, Karin heard. “I know this fire is his work. He is in prison in Grave, so he must have hired someone. My daughter’s house was completely trashed last week. Cut everything open, probably looking for hidden money. And he is behind that too.”
“Last year he already shouted that he was going to shoot us to pieces.”
According to Karin, Roland has been convicted of violence and threats before. During the trial it became clear that H. has at least six convictions to his name in more than twenty years. “I have also been abused by him all my life. He also threatened people who witnessed this.”
Karin is now looking for a place where she is safe and can relax again. After the arson, she is again in contact with the law about her ex. “It seems like they are now taking it seriously and are trying to keep him in jail longer.”
But Karin is not sure that that is enough and that it remains a fire and a burglary. “Last year he already shouted that he was going to shoot us to pieces. He is crazy and capable of anything.”
ALSO WORTH IT:
Arrest team raided a house that had burned down, neighborhood suspects intent
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