The Spaniard who attacked and beat to death a Dutch filmmaker in Mallorca in 2018 has been sentenced to six and a half years in prison for this. Spanish media report that five years after the robbery murder, someone has now been convicted in the case. The perpetrator would have received three and a half years for the violent robbery and three years for manslaughter. He also has to pay 150,000 euros in damages to the next of kin.
The 34-year-old film editor Wouter van Luijn was on holiday in Mallorca with his father when the incident took place. According to ANP news agency, he wanted to buy drugs in a neighborhood of the capital La Palma during an evening out. There he was ambushed by the perpetrator and some accomplices, where he was hit on the head so hard that he lost consciousness. The perpetrator drove him to the hospital himself, but Van Luijn died there. The blows to his head, in combination with an aneurysm from which Van Luijn suffered, had led to a cerebral hemorrhage.
Van Luijn edited dozens of Dutch feature films, such as Mudguard and Brasserie Valentine. He was nominated for a Golden Calf in 2013 for ‘best editing’ of the film Wolf. In 2018, he received that award posthumously for his editing of WE.