According to the police, the man was alone in Meerkerk. “Further investigation showed that he had left his car at a company in Gorinchem, the car was found there and secured. However, the four-year-old boy has not yet been found. The interrogation with the suspect has not yet led to the determination of the whereabouts of the child,” said the Zeeland West Brabant police, who state that an Amber Alert will be sent. The Dutch police works closely with the Belgian investigators.
The police are very concerned. All the more so because in 2010 the Belgian was sentenced to ten years in prison for the death of 2-year-old Miguel van Kiekinge from Ravels. De Kock allegedly abused the child so badly that he died on July 2, 2008 from his injuries in hospital. The then 21-year-old Belgian is said to have beaten the child relentlessly after which he himself took the toddler to the hospital where serious head injuries and injuries were found all over the body. The Belgian knew the child because of his relationship with the mother. At the time, he was unemployed and addicted to drugs.
De Kock was last seen with 4-year-old Dean on Wednesday, January 12 at half past ten in the Belgian Sint-Niklaas, not far from the Dutch border near Zeeland. The Belgian regularly looked after the boy and is not the father of the child. The mother of the toddler filed a report on Dean’s disappearance last Saturday after she had spoken to De Kock.
Puncture
In an interview with the Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad, the mother said on Monday that the man claimed to be in Hasselt, but that he had a flat tire and had to wait for a tow truck. For medical reasons, she brought the child to a friend in Sint-Gillis-Waas on Wednesday who is in a relationship with De Kock to let him sleep there for the night. According to the mother, Dean often visited her friend and knew the two well. On Thursday, the couple announced that they would stay with them for another day.
Although the woman was not happy about that and told her friend that she had consulted her mother, she left it at that. But afterwards, as she tells in the Belgian newspaper, that turned out to be a lie. “When I arrived at my mother’s on Friday evening, it turned out that Dean was not always there. I was in all states.” She heard that De Kock and his girlfriend had an argument after which he was thrown out on the street. “He left Friday night and he took Dean with him,” the mother says. Why he did that is unclear. The girlfriend did not dare to tell the mother that.