A 21-year-old from Dongense wanted to wash her car in front of her parents’ garage, after which her 76-year-old neighbor went crazy and moved her car with his shovel. That’s a nutshell of how things went wrong last Wednesday. “Sir came screaming, with bloody wrists, towards me.”
After a short survey in the Schuberstraat, it quickly becomes clear where our reporter should ring the doorbell. “There! But sir is always busy. So he must not be there.”
An older man with silver hair opens the door. “Good morning young lady,” he says smiling. When I ask him how things got so out of hand last Wednesday, his face twists. “I confused completely crazy.” A little further on he has a garage box where he was busy with his shovel on Wednesday afternoon. “I wanted to go outside with my shovel, to my country. Then suddenly there was a car, locked.”
“What did he do to my car that left his arms bleeding?
The car turned out to belong to his back neighbor girl. The 21-year-old woman wanted to wash her car in front of her parents’ garage, which is at odds with that of her neighbour. “I had walked in to make some soapy water and change because I was coming from work. When I walked back out, the gentleman came screaming at me with bloody wrists.”
“He pointed to his arms and yelled ‘Look what you’ve done!’ So I thought: What did he do to my car that left his arms bleeding? My dad thinks the neighbor tried to release the handbrake through the underside of my car.” “I tried to push it away myself,” the man says.
The Dongense thought that her neighbor did not have to go outside, because his car was already parked next to the garage box. “My garage door is open,” said the man. “I’m busy there. Then you just ask. I think that’s antisocial. I’ve said a few times: ‘Put him away, because I have to get out’. But she said ‘No I won’t’.”
“I yelled ‘Put my car down! Put it down!'”
“His own car was there too,” says his neighbour. “He was quite aggressive. Then I thought: I’m not going to go into it. I didn’t hear a clear question, just screaming.” Then she started washing her car.
“Then all of a sudden I heard him start his shovel. He put that scoop right under my car. I yelled ‘Put my car down! Put it down!’ I tried to pull the handbrake, then he started hitting and kicking and grabbed me by the throat.” The man parked the car in a grassy field across the street.
“And now with my 76 years I had to sit in jail.”
“That’s not allowed, because of course I’m not allowed to play my own judge,” the man sighs. “But I thought: Fuck off!” He says he has never been in contact with the police. “And now with my 76 years I had to sit in jail.”
But why not call the police yourself? “Yes, I should have. But I thought I’m not going to call every time a car is in the way. But I’m going to do that from now on,” he says firmly. The man has been addressing his neighbors for years about their ‘wrongly’ parked cars. “I once experienced six pallets of stones here. I’m done with it.”
His neighbor does not know exactly why the man went on such a rampage. “I found it quite intense. Maybe he was just having a bad day and this was the last straw. Or something is not going well psychologically. That’s why I don’t report abuse and I only want the damage to my car reimbursed.”
“I’ve known Mr. for 21 years. We’ve never had any problems. I’ve played with his grandchildren. Maybe that’s why I ignored him at first. Just ignore it before it gets worse, I thought.”
The 76-year-old Dongenaar is also disappointed. “I was always fun with those kids and with their parents,” says the man. “It was always ‘good morning’, just having a chat. But now there are of course problems.”
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