Sought
With one striking blow to the face, Lucas, an pseudonym for a 20-year-old boy, was knocked out in Antwerp. He was so badly injured that it could have cost him his life: a brain haemorrhage, emergency surgery and a three-week hospital stay. A year later, the three perpetrators are still at large. “You have to be a trained fighter to knock someone out with one striking blow,” said the Antwerp police.
Ellen Nagtegals, Axelle Pardon
Faroek Özgünes, together with the police and the judiciary, searches for perpetrators of crimes, witnesses and missing persons, and asks for the help of readers and viewers. Follow all his investigation reports closely through our file.
His mother quickly throws a pair of dirty socks into the laundry basket. “Guys,” she sighs with a wink. We speak to Lucas in his room in the attic, a place that is exactly what you would expect from a young man in his twenties: a computer for gaming, a comfortable chair for chilling and a rack full of sports shoes. Here Lucas tells anonymously and under an pseudonym what happened a year ago.
“It was a nice evening,” he reflects on May 16 last year. That day, he and two friends go to the Red & Blue disco in Antwerp, near the MAS. “We partied all night, nothing happened.”
The disco closes its doors at 5 o’clock in the morning. Lucas and his friends take their things and want to go outside. Surveillance footage shows how a man wearing a white T-shirt starts arguing with a friend of Lucas. We give him the pseudonym Milan. “The man asked Milan for a cigarette, but he didn’t have one,” says Lucas.
Black hole
“The last thing I remember is walking out the door,” he continues. “After that it is one black hole.” Afterwards he is told by his friends what happened. “Milan was attacked outside.” Surveillance images show the man in the white T-shirt waiting for Milan at a van. He punches Milan, pushes him against the van, pulls him to the ground and drags him across the cobblestones. His companion, a man with a cap and a dark beard, kicks Milan while he is already on the ground.
“I tried to intervene, but was then attacked myself,” Lucas continues. The images show how the man with the cap starts hitting Lucas. Then out of nowhere a third man walks up, a man wearing a black coat. He kicks Lucas in the legs, picks him up and throws him to the ground. Lucas straightens up again and tries to calm things down. “I clearly asked to stop. It was enough.” But just then the man in the black coat lashes out again. “Then the light went out,” says Lucas. He knocks Lucas out with one punch to the face. Lucas falls to the ground and remains motionless.
Going to sleep with a cerebral hemorrhage
Lucas’ friends call an ambulance, but he is sent away again at the hospital. “They let me walk outside alone,” he says in disbelief. Once home he crawls into bed. He calls it ‘pure luck’ that he wakes up a few hours later, because it later turns out that he has a brain haemorrhage. “When I woke up, my pillows were covered in blood. I had a huge headache.” Lucas goes to the hospital again and now a brain scan is made. He must immediately undergo emergency surgery and stay in hospital for three weeks. “I will have a reinforcement plate in my head for the rest of my life because my brain is completely damaged.”
“I went to sleep with a brain haemorrhage. I could have died. I realize that very well,” Lucas says quietly. “It must have been terrible for my parents too. Would I make it out alive or not?”
Stop studying
A year has now passed, but Lucas is still having a hard time. “I was a normal boy. I played football. I studied. Everything was nice. But then everything stops. Then everything comes to a standstill. You hear that you are not allowed to play sports for six months, you are not allowed to do this, you are not allowed to do that…” Lucas even had to stop his studies to become a Physical Education teacher because he had fallen too far behind.
“I’m trying to move on with my life, but it’s not easy. The most important step in my recovery process would be if the boy who hit me that one time is arrested. Then I can look at him and I hope he realizes what he has done,” Lucas concludes courageously. “Knocking someone unconscious, putting on your hood, walking away and leaving that person for dead? That’s no small feat.”
Trained fighter
The police are looking for the three men who beat up Lucas and Milan. It concerns the man with the white T-shirt, the man with the cap and the man with the black jacket. “We dare to conclude that the man with the black coat is a trained fighter,” says Kim Bastiaens of the Antwerp police. “He knocks out the victim with one striking blow.”
The investigators are also looking for an important witness. This is a man with dark hair, a dark beard and a black jacket. He goes to Lucas when he is unconscious on the ground and he speaks to two boys who filmed the fight. This man may have more information about the facts.
Finally, the police are also looking for other people who took images of the fight. With all your tips and information you can call the free number 0800 30 300 or you can email to [email protected].
This investigation report was created following a collaboration between the Federal Police, the Public Prosecution Service and DPG Media.
