Truck driver Maksim had a fight a year and a half ago with a colleague in the parking lot at the Hazeldonk border crossing and was stabbed to death, barefoot. The public prosecutor in Breda thinks that his colleague Yuri M. is the perpetrator and demanded 12 years in prison against him on Wednesday.
Maksim Hryn (25) came from Belarus (Belarus), was married and father of two young children. He was employed by a transport company from Lithuania. On Saturday morning, October 21, 2023, he had arrived with his trailer on border crossing Hazeldonk-Oost with a load from southern Europe. He had to deliver it to a company in the middle of the Netherlands.
That evening there were up to ninety trucks parked in the parking lot. Around half past seven some truckers saw something crazy. A man walked barefoot, staggering about the parking lot. They saw him die in the parking lot. Emergency services could not mean anything to him anymore. It turned out not to be natural death, the trucker had stab wounds.
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Whiskey and Cognac
The police closed the entire parking lot shortly after the violent death of Maksim. Everything and everyone was photographed and camera images and dashcams were bored. Investigators spoke with many drivers, but the bird seemed flown.
Yet the police picked up a trail and a description. Because a few days after the fatal stabbing, a worried brother -in -law of Maskim called the police when he heard it from the dead trucker on Hazeldonk. He came up with important information.
It turned out: Maksim had called that day during the day with his brother -in -law. And he had told that he had been with one ‘Jura’ all day, a fellow driver of the same company. They had drunk whiskey, cognac and coffee and ate together. Striking too: Maksim also told his brother -in -law that they had got into a fight.
The police found proof of that fight, because camera images appeared. Maksim and the same man were then seen. They were pushed and pulled in two times. It also became clear that the man was parked near Maksim. But the police had not seen him or spoken that evening.
Television
A few weeks after the Trucker’s death, calls followed on television, also in Russian. In it, the police said that in connection with the case they were looking for a bald man of around sixty years, of Baltic or Eastern European descent. A suspect could be arrested on Monday 13 November in the Eemshaven in Groningen. It was a suspect ‘Jura’ who is called Yuri in real life and is now 59 years old.
Experts searched the suspect’s truck. With special equipment they found blood from the victim. That was, invisible to the naked eye, on a curtain on the side of the passenger seat. Forensic experts also found DNA of the suspect on the T-shirt of Maksim and no one else.
Shoes
The Public Prosecution Service (OM) thinks that a fight in the truck cabin got out of hand. And Yuri would then have stabbed Maksim with a knife or other sharp object five times. What the fight was about is unknown. The murder weapon was never found. And that also applies to the shoes or slippers from Maksim.
Yuri was initially silent in his police interrogations. At a first interim session he denied everything “I can only declare that I did not commit the crime,” he said. He also told the police that he had been sleeping all night, despite all the sirens and flashing lights and fuss in the parking lot. And that after that he no longer got in touch with his comrade and just started driving again. The OM does not believe that and demanded 12 years in prison for manslaughter.
The court in Breda will rule in two weeks.
Waiting for privacy settings …