Two underage boys have been arrested for seriously assaulting Alwi Smolders (59) at the Plus aan de Heyhoef in his hometown of Tilburg. There a boy raced through the supermarket on an electric scooter. When he said something about it, Alwi was seriously beaten. One of the boys lives a few hundred meters from Alwi, he says on Thursday evening.
The police do not say exactly how old the boys are. Alwi received serious blows to the head and subsequently suffered from a concussion, a collapsed eardrum and several hemorrhages.
Alwi said on Thursday evening that the police could hardly believe that the victims were minors. From Alwi’s description they seemed older, he reports. One of the boys was arraigned and the other released, police told him. He doesn’t know if the boy with the scooter or the other one has been released.
Abuse
Things went wrong on October 29. It started with a comment about an electric scooter, he says. “That boy was already riding his scooter through the store very aggressively and provocatively. Then he also came and drove circles around me.”
Alwi asked the young man ‘if he thought this was normal’. “He thought that was normal, he said, and I responded by saying that his parents would be proud of him. He also said: ‘Yes, very proud’. Then I said: ‘What a sick jerk you are’.”
Shortly after that last comment, Alwi lay on the ground. “I didn’t see it coming. He had another friend, he probably grabbed me from behind, but it happened so quickly.” At the first blow his glasses immediately fell to the ground, then Alwi fell to the ground. Then he mainly received blows to the head, maybe also kicks, but he doesn’t know that.
The perpetrator lives a few hundred meters from Alwi
The boy with the scooter lives ‘less than a few hundred meters’ from Alwi’s house, he recently learned. “That is a very unpleasant feeling. I pass by it almost every day.”