Teacher Leoni* was injured 25 years ago in the first school shooting in the Netherlands. That happened at ROC De Leijgraaf in Veghel. For the first time she looks back. She talks anonymously about what it has done to her: “I’m still frightened by fireworks and shootings in films.”
We go back with Leoni to Tuesday, December 7, 1999, around half past two in the afternoon. Students and teachers are working quietly in the open learning center of the De Leijgraaf Regional Training Center in Veghel. Until Ali D. comes in and suddenly starts shooting around.
At first Leoni does not realize what is happening. “I saw flashes of light and heard bangs, but I couldn’t place it. I thought: gosh, it looks like fireworks. But it became very intense.”
“I thought: I have to get out of here. This is not right.”
After first hiding under a desk, she flees into the hallway. “I thought: I have to get out of here. This is not right.” But just then the shooter comes after her. Ali fires a total of fourteen bullets. One of them hits Leonie in the upper arm, near her shoulder. She falls to the ground and can’t do anything anymore.
The background of the shooting
On Tuesday afternoon, December 7, 1999, Ali D., then 17, walked into ROC de Leijgraaf in Veghel with a gun. He is looking for 19-year-old Hassan who is no longer studying there, but who happens to be present at the ROC that day. He is hit several times, but suffers non-life-threatening injuries. The target, a boy of Turkish descent, took Ali’s 15-year-old sister to Turkey two months earlier. Ali’s act is seen as a botched honor killing.
Underage shooter Ali D. gets five years in prison. His father Kerim, the owner of the weapon, is sentenced to nine years in prison for allegedly inciting his son to commit the act.
The shooting is world news. Journalists from all over the world come to Veghel to report. It is the first shooting at a school in the Netherlands. Later, the school shooter was also present at a shooting during a kickboxing gala in Zijtaart in 2012. One person was killed. He was arrested by the police at the time, but the Public Prosecution Service dismissed the case against him.
Only in the ambulance does Leonie realize how bad it is: “I could no longer move my fingers. In the hospital it turned out that a nerve was damaged, which meant I could no longer use my left arm.” After being released from the hospital, she visits the scene of the disaster. “I saw where I had been sitting under a table. There were two bullet holes in the ground. It turned out to be a good choice that I fled.”
“I didn’t feel like anything serious had happened.”
In February, two months after the shooting, Leonie is back in class. “I wanted that myself. I didn’t feel like anything serious had happened.” Using her arm is still not possible. “It just dangled, but there was no force in it. I was taken to school, I couldn’t drive.”
Only after several months of teaching does she realize the seriousness of what happened. She has to stop: “Mentally it was no longer possible. I had nights when I couldn’t sleep. There were clashes with other people because I was easily irritated. I was eventually diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).”
A difficult and difficult recovery follows. She receives EMDR therapy, among other things, a form of therapy used for recovery after trauma. “It took years before I could psychologically come to terms with the shooting.”
“I’m still scared by fireworks and shootings in movies.”
And even now she regularly suffers from the consequences of the shooting. Especially towards December. “I’m still scared by fireworks and shootings in movies. You won’t see me outside on New Year’s Eve. That fear reaction never completely goes away.”
Even when vice-principal Hans van Wieren was shot dead by a student at Terra College in The Hague in 2004, she had a hard time. “That really affected me. I heard teachers and students talking on television about what they felt. That is so recognizable. I also have that feeling again and again when shootings at schools in America.”
In the meantime, her arm is recovering with difficulty. “During the healing process I was often thrown back. I regularly had to pluck up the courage to continue. It ultimately took more than six months before the nerve in my arm was better again.”
“Sometimes I feel pain in my hand and I think of that song by Meau: You did that.”
Over the years, Leoni has learned to live with it, both mentally and physically. She continued to teach until her retirement. But she still can’t do everything with that arm. “Working in the garden or doing the housework is more difficult, just like my hobbies of sports, sculpting and modeling. And in cold weather I get a nagging nerve pain in my hand.”
Sometimes December 7, 1999 comes back to her mind. “Especially as the date approaches again. Sometimes I feel pain in my hand and I think of that song by Meau: You did that.” Every year she commemorates the shooting with her husband. “We’re going to eat somewhere or go for a walk. Then we are grateful that it turned out well. Because despite everything, we still made a good life of it.”
*Leoni is not her real name. She only wants to tell her story anonymously. Her real name is known to the editors.
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