1/4 Robin shows the injuries he sustained from his neighbor’s attack (photo: Imke van de Laar).
The fear is still good with Robin Schoonus from Tilburg. He was attacked by a confused neighbor on Saturday afternoon. Suddenly he stood at his door with a knife and an axe.
“What if my nine-year-old daughter had opened the door”, Robin wonders, a few hours after a neighbor showed up at his front door. The man was out of his mind and brandished an ax and a knife. According to Robin, that neighbor has had psychological problems. “I have been in contact with the local police officer and the housing association. But apparently nobody could help him, it had to go wrong first.”
Robin describes the neighbor, both men live in Mascagnistraat, as a very nice guy. “But he can also turn very well, if he is not in good shape.”
“I’m going to turn on the gas tap here.”
Robin says the man has serious psychological problems. “He once also called the police and said: put on your bomb vests, I’m going to open the gas tap here. And when I first moved here, he wrote me threatening letters. While I actually get along just fine with him.”
And because these kinds of incidents do not affect you as a neighbor and father of a young daughter, Robin had regular contact with housing corporation WonenBreburg and the police. “But my neighbor did not want to be admitted and a forced recording was not possible, I was told.”
“There was the neighbor, with a knife and an axe.”
It all went wrong on Saturday. When Robin was in the shower, the doorbell rang. “My girlfriend opened the door. And there was the neighbor, with a knife and an axe. I yelled: Close the door! Immediately afterwards he threw the window of the living room.”
Robin went to the neighbor to redress and there he was attacked. “He lashed out with the knife. I fought it off with my arm. Then he grabbed my throat and squeezed it shut. He really wanted to kill me.”
Robin’s girlfriend and a neighbor who rushed over managed to pull the man off Robin: “The light almost went out. I think I would have been dead otherwise.” The police arrived very quickly and the neighbor was taken from his house by an arrest team and taken away.
The next day, Robin shows the wounds on his arm, back and in his neck. “Fortunately it is not that bad. But what if my daughter had opened the door? This could have gone so wrong. And that while I have asked for help so many times. It’s not about me, but this really has to change.”
“Why should something like this happen in the first place?”
It particularly annoys Robin that he made several reports to WonenBreburg and the police, but that nobody could do anything. “That really bothers me. Why does something like this have to happen first? I’ve been warning about this for seven months. WonenBreburg has already warned about this. And the police have been working on it for a long time. That cannot be, that a local resident first must happen before action can be taken? I think that’s really ridiculous.”
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