Couple angry about damage to home by drunk driver: ‘We didn’t understand anything about it’

They are angry, Arjan Veendijk and Carola Pieters from Tynaarlo. Around four o’clock on Saturday morning, they were rudely awakened when a car rammed into their house; a big hole in the house is the result. The driver turned out to have been drinking and had already been arrested. Arjan and Carolien don’t understand that at all.

The driver, a 40-year-old man from Haren, was arrested earlier in the night on the N386 between Peize and Vries. According to police spokesperson Thijs Damstra, the man refused any form of cooperation and as a result his driver’s license was confiscated.

The man then left by taxi to the carpool place where a recovery company had parked his car. “There he got behind the wheel again and then drove into a house in Tynaarlo. He was subsequently arrested again and is now detained,” the police spokesman said. The car caught fire upon impact with the house.

The damage to the house is so great that the residents cannot return home for the time being, the van Vries fire brigade reports on Facebook.

According to resident Arjan Veendijk, he and his wife Carola were shocked when they were rudely awakened by the collision around 4 a.m. at night. “We slept well,” says Arjan. “Actually, we didn’t understand it at all at first.”

Arjan and Carola are especially angry that the driver was able to get behind the wheel again. “They already had that man and then he can start driving again, I can’t do that,” says Arjan. Today he will sit down with the insurer to see what needs to be done to repair the damage. And actually he also wants more clarity from the police.

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