A confused man caused a lot of commotion and damage in Moergestel on Monday morning. Early in the morning he damaged about fifteen cars in the Prinsessenbuurt. Local residents alerted the police, who were eventually able to arrest the 38-year-old man.
There is a large footprint in the door of Jan and Yvonne Smits’ sparkling blue Alfa Romeo. Yvonne didn’t even notice that anything was wrong at first. “I saw a few people standing by my car this morning and jokingly wanted to ask: ‘Do you want to buy it?'”
Smits is very careful with her car and was shocked when she saw the dent. “What drives someone to destroy other people’s things?” Her husband Jan knows the arrested suspect. He has destroyed cars in the neighborhood before. “We’re quite scared of it now.”
Confused local resident
There is a big dent in the tailgate of Ans van Esch’s black Volkswagen. She also knows the suspect. ‘It scared me. He always had a very strange look in his eyes.’ She woke up in time but did not notice the destruction. “He seemed to shout ‘in the name of God’.”
Her neighbor Kees van de Ven says she has been experiencing nuisance from the man for years. It is also not the first time that the white Peugeot in front of his door has been a victim. “A while ago he made three scratches on the side from front to back with a key. Now he has put a dent in the door again.”
Van de Ven placed cameras to catch the man. “I have been working with many cameras for seven years to capture him, but unfortunately it never worked. He knows exactly how to walk.”
Maserati in the driveway
While most local residents paint the image of a man who looks right through you and makes little contact, Van de Ven has sometimes confronted the suspect and sometimes given him things that he no longer needed.
In the driveway in front of his house there are two rather expensive cars: an exclusive Jeep and a luxury sports car. Both cars are undamaged. “If he had tried to kick the Jeep he would have hurt himself pretty badly, and luckily he left my Maserati alone.”
The police could not say on Monday afternoon how many cars were damaged. She reports that only one report of vandalism has been received. The police are calling on affected local residents to report if they have damage to their car caused by the arrested suspect. The police cannot confirm whether the 38-year-old suspect previously caused damage to cars, as reported by several local residents.