The escape of an armed TBS prisoner has given a group of disabled clients and supervisors from the Jo-Anna care farm on the Broekdijk in Hulten quite a fright. The group heard the shots, after which the owner went outside to see what was going on. “The police shouted at me to get back in quickly because it wasn’t safe.”
Around half past twelve on Thursday afternoon, an armed TBS prisoner escaped from a clinic on the Vrederust Estate in Halsteren. The man fled in a car and police gave chase. Ultimately, the man got stuck at the track on the Broekdijk in Hulten, after which he fled again. Officers chased him down and shot him.
The owner of the care farm, who does not want to be named, went outside to see what was going on. “I saw a lot of police on their feet. That already scared me. And then an officer shouted that I had to go inside quickly, because it was not safe.”
“The supervisors called to tell us to stay where we were.”
At that moment, a group of clients from the care farm were walking nearby. “We heard three to four shots from a distance,” says client Karel de Zwart, who has problems with his emotions. “We wanted to walk back, but then the supervisors called and told us to stay where we were. A man had escaped and they didn’t have him yet,” he said.
He himself is quite cool about it. “It doesn’t bother me that much. That man probably didn’t have a revolver,” Karel laughs. He apparently did not notice that the escaped TBS prisoner was armed. Many other clients have taken advantage of the incident. “It was all very scary,” says the owner. “For one client this is even extra poignant, because a few weeks ago he was also in the Erasmus MC hospital in Rotterdam, where shots were fired.”
The care farm supervisors kept the building locked for half an hour. Only when the police were gone did they think it was safe enough to go out again. The armed TBS officer was shot next to a childcare center. They do not want to comment on the incident there, but according to several parents, the children inside did not experience anything.
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