Willem M. was sentenced on Wednesday to twelve years in prison and TBS for the deliberate death of Rotterdam motorcycle police officer Arno de Korte last summer. This has been determined by the District Court of Rotterdam. M. had been detained on suspicion of manslaughter since July 2021. The punishment corresponds to the requirement of the Public Prosecution Service.
On July 7, 2021, motorcycle police officer De Korte was killed after he was hit by a truck that M. was driving. The Public Prosecution Service suspected M. of having hit the motorcycle officer on purpose, out of “rancor” against the police. De Korte was dragged hundreds of meters by the truck and left on the road surface, after the collision M. drove on. He has always denied the allegations. In his version of events, he did not notice De Korte in time, because the motorcycle cop would have suddenly come to drive in front of him.
M. had previously been involved in two serious traffic incidents, in which an officer lost his arm in 2015 and a woman was killed in 2020. According to his neighbors, the man, who lived in a South Holland village, felt hounded and intimidated by the police. After his arrest, M. was psychologically examined by the Pieter Baan Center. That investigation showed that the man suffers from various disorders and was therefore less accountable when he hit the motorcycle police officer.
Also read: Villagers paint a very different picture than the police of the trucker who killed a cop