Two brothers aged 24 and 35 from Hoogeveen were sentenced to 180 hours of community service for attempted murder of a fellow townsman. In addition, the judge imposed a suspended six-month prison sentence on them.
This is a big difference with the requirement of three years in prison that the Public Prosecution Service (OM) previously proposed. The judge found that the brothers reacted too violently in the beating, but the victim had not left himself unaffected either. The 29-year-old man had a bone to pick with the brothers at the end of September 2021 and went to their home.
That Sunday afternoon, the brothers and their families were startled by a lot of noise and glass shattering at their home on Kometenlaan. A chair had been thrown through the window. Behind the window sat a mother with a child. The thrower shouted death threats at the family and brandished a knife.
The brothers ran outside and beat the man with a stick and a bat. “The victim was beaten in blind anger,” the judge said. Both men went way too far in this. The victim suffered two broken arms, a skull fracture and a hemorrhage in his brain.
The man could have died from the dozens of blows. According to the judge, the brothers had a reason to go outside and defend themselves against their attacker. “But not like this,” said the judge. However, he felt that a prison sentence was disproportionate to the accusations made by both men.
The victim later appeared before the police judge for public violence. He sentenced the Hoogevener to a community service of sixty hours.