Relatives of Rinke Terpstra, one of the victims of the tram attack in Utrecht in 2019, hold transport company Qbuzz and the province of Utrecht jointly responsible for his death. That writes de Volkskrant Saturday, exactly four years after the attack. Several passengers were unable to flee because the tram driver kept the doors closed in the second tram set.
The tram driver could normally have seen what was going on, but the monitor in the driver’s cab did not work. She therefore did not see that Gökmen T. opened fire. Tram drivers must indicate when there is a defect in the vehicle, but the driver at the time of the attack and her predecessor failed to do so. The doors also remained closed because someone had pulled the emergency brake. The driver left the doors closed in accordance with the ’emergency braking protocol’.
Qbuzz is responsible for carrying out safety checks before departure and for ‘immediately’ reporting defects to the maintainer. As the lessor of the trams, the province of Utrecht must take care of maintenance and repair. Both the transport company and the province did not want to respond to reports from The Volkskrant.
The camera images show that Terpstra, together with a fellow passenger, kicked a window out of the tram door and then let five passengers go first. When he himself could not get away fast enough, T. shot him in the back. Ultimately, four people died from the attack. Gökmen T. received a life sentence in 2020.