Harsh images of a fight between several students on a scheduled bus that passed through Aartselaar in Antwerp last week are circulating on social media. The footage shows a teenager receiving fierce kicks in the face and being beaten. The victim was able to flee and report the crime two days later.
Regional journalist at HLN
It concerns facts from a week ago, on Monday June 1, on a De Lijn school bus on line 133. The boy receives severe blows and is thrown over seats by another boy. Eventually he ends up on the floor of the bus and the other boy continues to kick and punch, including on the victim’s head.
The video was already widely shared by Vlaams Belang and party chairman Tom Van Grieken. The police in the HEKLA zone have started an investigation into mutual beatings after the underage boy was able to report the incident. That happened two days after the facts. “The images are part of the investigation,” said Kato Belmans of the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office. “There is still a lot of uncertainty about the circumstances.”
Stopped at next stop
“Those images are of course terrible,” said Jens van Herp, spokesperson for De Lijn. “Our driver initially didn’t notice the fight. It was an ‘articulated bus’ (a harmonica bus, ed.), so he could not keep an eye on all the passengers until the end of the vehicle. He was alerted by a young lady and then slowed down the vehicle.”
Van Herp is clear about why the driver did not stop the bus. “That is absolutely not the intention. The driver only stopped at the next stop. If he had stopped the bus en route and opened the doors, the victim might have walked onto the road, with all possible consequences. According to protocol, the driver called dispatch and explained what was going on. Dispatch then called the emergency services.”
There are no images of the entire incident. Normally, De Lijn physically removes the images from the bus and then hands them over to the police. But this was an older type of bus. The investigation continues.