In the run-up to the recent New Year’s Eve, a pile of car tires was set on fire in Veen, against custom. There was a cheerful atmosphere. Two men from Wijk and Aalburg who were involved in this must have laughed. They stood before the police judge in Breda on Thursday. He imposed two months in prison on a 23-year-old man, and his 21-year-old companion was sentenced to 160 hours of community service. “It has to end!”
They are also not allowed to enter an area around the infamous intersection in the village where fires are traditionally set for three years, between December 1 and January 2. If they do, they will immediately go to jail for two weeks.
Furthermore, the two must jointly pay compensation of more than 2,000 euros to the municipality of Altena, which includes Veen and Wijk and Aalburg.
The public prosecutor also wanted to get tough on the older of the two suspects and even demanded a ten-month prison sentence. Especially because this man had made the mistake again. A community service order of 180 hours and an area ban were demanded against his younger companion.
‘Good use’
For decades, it has been ‘good practice’ in Veen for residents to gather at the intersection of Witboomstraat and Van der Loostraat on New Year’s Eve. Mainly (scrap) cars and car tires are towed to have them reduced to ashes.
During the most recent New Year’s Eve celebration, eleven cars caught fire. This was not about this on Thursday, but about the warm-up: delivering and setting fire to car tires in the night of December 27 to 28, 2023.
The public prosecutor lumped it all together and wanted to put an end to it: “This is no longer innocent. It leads to damage and unrest and insecurity for the environment and it shocks the legal order.” The officer underlined those words by showing photos that he had taken from the Omroep Brabant site. He spoke of a ‘shocking impression.’
‘Getting a new load’
According to the judiciary, R., the father of a young daughter, told the police that he regretted that nothing had happened yet at the infamous intersection. The officer. “He even went to get a new load of tires when the first fire had gone out. In short, he played a very big, important role.”
De R. stated that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that he had not loaded tires or was otherwise involved in the arson. “I heard some rumbling and went to take a look, but I didn’t do anything because I didn’t want to get caught again,” said the owner of a courier and transport company. He had already been convicted for an arson in Veen at the end of 2022. For this he would still have to serve a small part of a community service order of 100 hours.
‘Memory of my father’
De R. was only arrested a few days later, even though he knew that the police were looking for him. “But I really wanted to set off fireworks on January 1 in memory of my father, who had died a year earlier. Then I reported myself,” said the older of the two suspects.
Their lawyers had a lot of difficulty with the harsh words of the judiciary and they tried to convince the police judge that their client had been denigrated too much. The police judge could not be persuaded: both literally and figuratively got their hands dirty: “This is simply not possible! It has to end!”
The oldest perpetrator will go to jail for another six months if he makes the mistake again. The other man from Wijk en Aalburg received a suspended prison sentence of two months. In both cases, the number of days they spent in pre-trial detention will be deducted from the sentence. Both left deeply disappointed.
The fires resulted in a lot of work for the fire brigade, but also intense images: