“A small child can think that if you do this, it will end badly,” the judge said to a 21-year-old man from Assen. The twenty-something dropped a crush barrier on the road surface on September 11, 2019, where a scooter collided. The driver landed badly on her head and suffered a skull fracture. She has not fully recovered to this day.
The judge found it proven that another serious injury was caused by the Assenaar. A prison sentence for such a serious offense is appropriate, the judge said. Were it not that the incident happened 3.5 years ago. Partly due to corona measures, the case remained on the shelf longer than necessary. “You do not strike me as a fighter, or someone who is out to injure another,” said the judge. He imposed a three-month suspended prison sentence on the man.
Out of wantonness, the then just 18-year-old young man laid crush barriers flat on the road surface on the Koopmansplein in Assen. A passer-by was disturbed by this and summoned the man to put back the gates. He did, the Assenaar told the judge. He went to chill with a friend afterwards. When he returned to the same place in the square, the gates had been moved again.
A woman on a scooter wanted to pass those gates. The Assenaar lifted one of the gates and let her through. Bystanders shouted that he had to drop that fence, the man said in court. Peer pressure caused him to drop the gate. This was followed by a hard blow and they saw a scooter go down. According to the Assenaar’s lawyer, it is quite possible that the scooter drove into other fences. And not against the fence that the Assenaar had dropped.
“My client is not responsible for that accident,” she said, pleading for an acquittal. The judge disagreed with her. “By putting a heavy object back on the road surface, you could have foreseen that someone would collide with it,” said the judge.
The victim asked for compensation of more than 26,000 euros. The judge awarded 6,000 euros as an advance, the rest must be submitted to the civil court.