A 21-year-old man from Beilen has been acquitted of assault, despite the serious injuries the victim suffered. According to the police judge, he acted in self-defense.
The suspect, then nineteen, clashed with a man in his sixties on a cycle path near Beilen on the night of February 19, 2022. The boy is on his way home from a party early in the morning with his girlfriend when they pass the man. At that moment he is peeing on the roadside and greets the girl when she cycles past him. “You don’t have to greet him like that,” the suspect snaps at him, pointing to the fact that the sixty-year-old is standing with his pants open next to the cycle path.
“Who was so rude?”
The two continue riding in the company of a friend, when they are overtaken by the man on his electric bicycle. “Which of you was as bold?” he asks as he gets off and cuts off their path. After an altercation, he punches the suspect in the face. He hits back hard, causing the man to strike again. However, the suspect arrives earlier and punches him again. The sixty-year-old then falls steeply backwards and lands with the back of his head on the asphalt. He lies there motionless.
The startled teenagers want to get on their bikes when they hear the victim gurgling madly. The three decide to put him in a recovery position, for fear that he will choke on his own tongue. “We learned that in gym,” one of them later told the police. They also locked the man’s bicycle and put the bicycle key in his jacket pocket. Then the trio leaves.
“That is a remarkable detail,” the judge tells the suspect. An idea from the friend, says the young man. “Such an expensive bicycle would otherwise be stolen immediately.”
Personality changed
The man is found a few minutes after the fight in a pool of blood by two friends, with whom he had a drink earlier that evening. In the hospital he appears to have suffered serious injuries. In addition to an open jaw fracture, he has a skull fracture and bleeding in his brain. He doesn’t know whether he will ever fully recover, the man tells the judge. “It has permanently changed my personality.” He is demanding damages of 15,000 euros.
The public prosecutor sees the boy as guilty of the man’s permanent injuries. “There is no question of emergency defense here, the suspect also says afterwards that he should have acted differently. He never wanted this, but he is responsible.” The Public Prosecutor wants the suspect to receive 120 hours of community service, of which 40 hours are conditional. By leaving the victim and his bicycle on the road, he also caused a dangerous traffic situation. For this he demands another 10 hours of community service.
Reliable statements
Due to the fall, the victim no longer knows anything about the incident. The police must therefore rely on the statements of the suspect and his friends. They agree, the judge says. “I have no reason to doubt the statements, there is nothing to show that you have coordinated the stories.” It has been established that both the victim and the three teenagers had been drinking alcohol.
According to the judge, the suspect did not use excessive force. “You were not the aggressor, the first blow came from the victim, I see enough evidence for that.” She finds the young man’s actions understandable. “In this situation there was no alternative, an adult man who aggressively approaches a teenager and shows that he wants to use violence is threatening.”
The suspect has a history of domestic violence and bullying. “And then here stands another adult man, using violence for no good reason.”
Stories in Beilen
Immediately after the incident, all kinds of stories started circulating in Beilen. The man is said to have caught burglars or clashed with asylum seekers. At the insistence of his mother, the suspect reports to the police. “Very bad,” says the judge. “Something terrible has happened, which will then take on a life of its own on social media.”
The incident has many consequences for the suspect: his house is pelted with eggs and bricks, he loses his job and is intimidated and abused on the street. “More than enough punishment,” says the judge, who also acquits him of causing an unsafe traffic situation. “I think this has already been a hard lesson. Also for Beilen, let’s not judge things like this too quickly. That has enormous consequences.”