The Prosecutor's Office (OM) on Thursday demanded four years in prison against a 36-year-old Romanian who, fleeing from police, allegedly tried to kill two police officers and a road worker.
The man ignored a stop sign from a police patrol in Horn on March 28, 2019. That led to a wild west chase at 100 kilometers per hour from the Haelerweg via the Napoleonsweg and Haelen to Buggenum. During that mad dash, the Romanian allegedly rammed the police car several times in an attempt to push the vehicle off the road. He then drove through a roadblock in Buggenum. In the process, he rammed an excavator that a road worker had narrowly jumped behind to avoid a collision. The Romanian fled further on foot and jumped into the ice-cold Meuse. He eventually swam back to the bank. There, police picked him up.
The Romanian, prosecutor Rob van Dartel believes, belongs to one of the gangs traveling across Europe with the goal of committing crimes. "He lives off crime. This is evident from the heavy convictions in other countries."
In the Netherlands, the man ran into trouble when police, following a tip-off, wanted to arrest a passenger car and a van in which four Romanians were traveling. The driver of the vehicle in which three people were sitting stopped for the police. The driver of the van fled the scene.
Panic
He told judges Thursday that he had done so in a panic and that he had never intended to injure anyone. He and his pals were reportedly on their way to a hardware store to deliver stolen metals in Belgium.
"I owed my compatriots 2,000 euros. I hoped to earn that amount by selling the metal. They threatened to take my family in Romania if I didn't pay off my debt quickly."
According to his lawyer Sjanneke de Crom, the judges can only convict the Romanian for threatening the officers. "He did not have any intention to kill people or cause them injury," he said. De Crom believes the defendant should be acquitted for driving into the road worker in Buggenum. "He has said from the outset that he did not see anyone at that road break." The Romanian has been in jail for nearly 14 months. With that, in De Crom's view, he has been sufficiently punished. The judge will make his ruling on May 28.
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