1/2 Indy van Hees and her sisters Dana and Liva (photos from RTL documentary).
Indy van Hees survived the accident with the Stint in her hometown Oss five years ago. She was in a coma for days. For years she worked to recover from the serious injuries she sustained in the terrible drama. But giving up is not in the mind of the now 16-year-old girl. “I want to show my sisters what you can achieve and that you can also be happy, although that sounds strange.”
Indy speaks in ‘Vijf jaar na de Stint’, a documentary that can be seen on RTL4 on Sunday from 10.25 pm. Program maker Humberto Tan talks to Indy and her parents. Father Erwin praises their daughter’s character.
On September 20, 2018, Indy was in a Stint with her sisters Dana (8) and Liva (4) and two other children from Oss, Fleur (5) and Kris (5). This ‘electric wagon’ collided with a train on the track that morning. The supervisor from Heesch of a daycare center that operated the Stint was also injured. The accident provoked many emotions throughout the country.
“We were singing, it was just fun.”
Indy remembers them singing before the fatal blow in the Stint. “I don’t remember which songs, but it was just fun,” she tells Tan. After the accident, she ended up in the bushes next to the railway. ‘A nice man’ was the first to take care of the girl. “That was the best at the time. I didn’t know what was going on. Otherwise I might have panicked and things could have turned out differently.”
Wendy van Hees, the mother of Indy, Dana and Liva, was told by a friend that there had been a fatal accident. Father Erwin says: “Two police officers came to our door. They said that Dana and Liva were dead and Indy was seriously injured. Then I think Wendy passed out. I especially wanted to know how Indy was doing.”
“Go tell them your sisters are gone.”
Indy would be in a critical condition for days. She could not be told until later that Dana and Liva had died. Wendy: “Go tell her that her sisters are gone. Especially since she was still fighting for her life.” Indy went to the morgue: “To accept it. Now it’s real,” she says.
It is now five years later. Five years in which Indy thinks about her deceased sisters on a daily basis, a period also with a tough rehabilitation. She had to learn to walk again with the help of a walker and crutches. Meanwhile, she also went to school. She completed a secondary education and will soon start an interior design course.
“She’s so strong, you never hear her complain about pain.”
Father Erwin is very proud of his daughter: “She is so strong, so powerful and you never hear her complain about pain.” Indy says in the RTL documentary that she wants to continue, for her sisters: “Because they also want it to go well. I would also like that for them, suppose I had not been there and they had.”
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