Fiona and Marcel Vos from Emmen were startled on Saturday evening by a violent incident for their hairdressing store on Hoofdstraat. Three young men were heavily abused there by a group of other young people. Without hesitation, the couple intervened and the duo managed to bring the victims to safety. “We don’t see it as a heroic act,” says Fiona Vos. “Everyone should do this for someone else.”
Around eleven o’clock Fiona heard a lot of noise from the bedroom. “It came from outside, against our security fences. Just the sound I heard: something is wrong here,” she says. “I immediately shouted Marcel:” Run down, I think there is a fight! “
Marcel ran outside immediately, Fiona followed. They didn’t know what to expect. “But perhaps we could help somewhere.”
Marcel and Fiona found a fierce situation outside. Marcel: “There were several people in fight. A few boys were already on the floor,” he says. “We tried to separate the perpetrators from the victims. You try to make you big, impress, to stop the violence.”
The victims were in the need for it. “It was terrible,” says Marcel. “Their faces were broken. Teeth out. Really something like that happens.”
What the couple hit the most was the meaningless violence. “A fight is bad enough, but if someone is lying on the floor, you will stop,” says Fiona. “You are not going to keep on one boy with five or six people. You just don’t do that.”
Together with bystanders, Fiona and Marcel managed to deduct the perpetrators from the victims. They brought the wounded youngsters to safety, behind the door of the alley next to their hairdressing store. “We called the police and let ambulances come.”
Only later, Marcel says, the seriousness of the situation penetrated him. In the heat of the fight, he only thought of helping. “But once I stood between that group, I thought for a moment: oh, oh, well I have to be careful.”
Fiona and Marcel spoke with the victims shortly after the incident. “They were still in shock, badly injured,” says Fiona. “They just entered the center, they just wanted to walk a night out, they said. This came out of nowhere.”
Whether this happens more often in the Hoofdstraat? “Something always happens here,” says Marcel. “It is always busy, sometimes with a bon. That is the youth of today, I think.” The couple hopes that the incident is a reason for more camera surveillance in the neighborhood.
A day after the incident, one of the parents of the victims called to thank them. “They would like to come by again, but we said: recover now first,” said Fiona.