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It is July 14, 2021 around 02:00 when the police of the Spanish island of Mallorca receive a report of a serious assault. Near the avenue of the famous resort of El Arenal, they find a man in serious condition on the street. According to health professionals, he has unequal pupils – indicating brain damage – and is unresponsive to stimuli. Dutch is rushed to hospital and dies four days later on July 18.
It quickly becomes clear that the victim is 27-year-old Carlo Heuvelman from Waddinxveen, who was on vacation with friends. “He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time,” concludes the prosecutor more than a year after his death.
Last month, justices sought prison sentences ranging from 180 days to 10 years for the fatal assault. Today the nine suspects will hear if they should go to jail.
‘escaped’
Abuse immediately unleashes a lot. Weblog GeenStijl manages to recover videos and names of possible suspects and there are speculations about their supposedly good origins. Furthermore, there is indignation on social media because the group immediately left for Holland after the violence, before the expected end of the holidays. The impression arises that they fled.
Justice is forced to issue a statement: “The search for the culprits is the task of the police and the Public Prosecutor’s Office. A little googling is not enough”.
The first arrest will be made in August. Authorities eventually track down several suspects, all from Hilversum. These are 18 and 19 year olds.
The first hearing will be held in November, but then nothing of substance will be discussed. Five men are still being held at the time, three of them suspected by the prosecution of the manslaughter of Carlo Heuvelman. All five are suspected of attempted murder.
Court drawing by (above fltr) Stan F., Martijn T., Lars van den H., Lukas O. and Daan van S. (below fltr) Kaan B., Mees T., Hein B. and Sanil B.:
ANP extension
The case is vast, not only due to the number of suspects, but also because two violent episodes occurred on that July 14th in the Spanish seaside resort. According to the prosecutor, Heuvelman’s assault was the second fight that evening.
Earlier in the evening, some of the suspects got into a fight with another group of tourists from Heerhugowaard. It happens in De Zaak, on the entertainment strip along the water. One of the men in the Hilversum group drums up the others, who are sitting in another pub: “Make sure the boys come to De Zaak around two o’clock. We have to teach a group a lesson,” he writes. The others hear that call and a fight breaks out.
Victims later report a broken thumb, nosebleeds and a broken nose in the Netherlands. Later, the justice states that one of them could have met “the same fate” as Charles.
After the violence of the first bar, the Hilversummers group moves on to a second bar. Heuvelman is out with his friends. The cause of the ensuing quarrel is not clear. Lead suspect Sanil B. claims a racist remark was made to him. Heuvelman’s group is said to have spat and cursed.
But according to the judiciary it is not true: no witnesses explain anything about it. “Everything shows that the suspects, after the first violence at De Zaak, were on a war footing and ran into Heuvelman and his friends”, concludes the judiciary. In any case, it is violent violence in which Heuvelman suffers brain injuries.
‘a little rough’
The judiciary does everything possible in the investigation. Undercover agents are deployed, suspects wiretapped, and sixty witnesses questioned about the fateful hours in the entertainment area. The result is a 4000 page file.
A witness says Heuvelman was kicked and beaten by three people. “The first punch I saw, it went to the floor. I saw it fall.” A woman working in Mallorca describes how she saw Heuvelman lying in a growing pool of blood. Still another says prime suspect Sanil B. “was a little flustered.”
The OM also comes with other possible evidence. Van Heuvelman’s DNA is found on B.’s shoe by the Dutch Forensic Institute. But the defense also questions this. The DNA trace would have a “mixed profile”, that is: a profile with DNA from several people. How the DNA ended up on the shoe has not been investigated.
shut up
Meanwhile, the suspects are not moving in court. They acknowledge that they were kicked in the series of fights, but as far as Heuvelman is concerned, they deny everything. Sanil B. insists he has never even seen Heuvelman. A phone call from the judge to clarify (“Be a man and tell me what happened”) goes nowhere.
The three suspects in the most serious acts of violence, Sanil B., Mees T. and Hein B., remain silent. And the other Hilversummers also do not want to say anything about what happened. The OM very much blames them for this. When the prosecutor presents the high sentencing requirements on October 17, he concludes with the words of Heuvelman’s father: “Sooner or later a decent person will have a problem with his conscience.”
The court will deliver its verdict today at 10:00.
