The channels run parallel, going down from the Zuidzijdsedijk. Pollen withered grass is churned up, roots protrude from the earth. To the ignorant, these are two meaningless gullies in the grass. For those who were there, they are the scars of a fateful drama.
Here on Saturday evening around 6 p.m. a truck drove down steeply, straight into the festivities from a standstill. The local ice club organized a barbecue on the occasion of the departure of the chairman. Six people were killed.
On Sunday morning, photographers, cameramen and writing journalists gather in Zuidzijde, a hamlet between Nieuw-Beijerland and Zuid-Beijerland. The truck is then already gone, removed by the police for technical investigation. The results of this could take weeks.
Tufts of residents stroll down from the dike. At the shack of the ice club, where a garland hangs tattered, people support each other. A little further on comes a bunch of sunflowers. Hardly anyone wants to speak to the press.
Cause unknown
What exactly went wrong is still completely unclear. The truck came to a stop at the T-junction with Langeweg and probably wanted to turn left, a police spokesperson said. Instead, the truck and trailer drove diagonally forward down the slope.
Immediately after the accident, rumors about the cause started. The 46-year-old driver of the truck from Spain is said to have smelled of alcohol, but the police strongly disputed that on Sunday. However, the driver is suspected of causing a traffic accident with fatal consequences and serious bodily injury. The man has been arrested.
The story seeped in Spanish media on Sunday that the driver had to swerve for a van. Anonymous sources within the transport company El Mosca, for which the driver was driving, tell the newspaper La Verdad that that was the cause of the accident.
A few hours after the accident, the police called through Burgernet to look out for the driver of a white van with an open loading platform, which had been standing at the intersection in question. The police have now heard this driver. “As a witness,” said a spokesman. “There’s no reason to name him differently at the moment.”
Six dead, seven injured
On Sunday morning, the pastor in the Bethelkerk in Oud-Beijerland reflected on the accident. “All flesh is like grass and all the glory of man is like a flower in the grass,” he announced during the service, which could also be followed online.
Just before that, he had to tell the faithful present that the wife, son and heavily pregnant daughter-in-law of a church member had died in the terrible accident the night before. “The grass has withered and its flower has fallen off.”
Not much later, the police announced that a total of six people were killed: three men and three women, aged between 32 and 75, all from the region. Seven people were still in hospital on Sunday, one of them in critical condition.
The acting mayor of the municipality of Hoeksche Waard, Charlie Aptroot, spoke on Twitter of an ‘unimaginable drama’ for the community. Prime Minister Mark Rutte and the royal couple also expressed their condolences to the relatives of the victims.
Around half past twelve, Mayor Aptroot addresses the press who have gathered on the Zuidzijdsedijk. He asks the journalists to leave, to give the residents their rest.
It becomes clear a little later that some people are annoyed by the flocking of journalists who try to obtain information about the circumstances of the accident. A man of about sixty walks up the slope from the shack of the ice rink to tell a police officer that enough is enough.
“They’re filming,” he says, pointing at a cameraman. ‘I know there are people who don’t appreciate that. He’s really going down the drain! I understand that there is freedom of the press, but this is not how it works. Salt it up now.’