Student sits quietly in the garden and gets a bullet in her neck, neighbor (72) is now in front of the right: « burden of proof is imaginative » (Keerbergen)

The student was quietly studying on her terrace at home in Keerbergen when she heard a shot on 11 August 2022. « Immediately afterwards I felt a shock going through my body, » she testified at the time Newspaper. « I dropped in my chair and could barely move. I had tingling in my arms, noise in my ears and felt a stabbing pain in my neck. When I grabbed my neck, I felt my hands got wet. Then I saw that blood was wearing. »

Lucky

The student then drove by bike to the home doctor. There she was advised to continue the wound at home. But because her parents found the wound worrying, they brought her to the hospital.

Read too. Student (23) is in a garden and suddenly gets a bullet in the neck: « I sank down in my chair and could barely move »

The wound turned out to be quite serious there. Scans were made, on which various pieces of projectile were shown. The student had to go under the knife immediately. In a five -hour operation, neurosurgeons removed tiny pieces of lead from her neck.

« They make the greatest effort to label me as a great liar, but the facts speak for themselves »

Wm

Defendant

« According to the doctors, I was very lucky, » she said after the operation. « One of the bullet residues was near my spinal cord. For the same money I was in a wheelchair. »

Caught by dead pigeon

The Leuven public prosecutor immediately opened an investigation, although it remained a mystery who had shot. Only a year later could the police identify a main suspect. That happened after a new incident in the same street, on July 13, 2023. A neighbor had heard another shot and saw WM (72) standing on his roof. In his hand he had a dead pigeon, which he himself had shot.

The neighbor immediately made the link with the facts a year earlier. He called the police, who carried out a spontaneous house search at M.

He was arrested and admitted that he had bought weapons and ammunition. But he told him that he did not have that weapon a year earlier. A lie, it turned out. WM already had the air pressure gun during the facts from a year earlier.

Weapon not found

Immediately after the facts, WM also came into the sight with the investigators, but they didn’t find the weapon then. « If I had said then I had a weapon, I would have made myself suspicious, » he said. « I sometimes shoot to chase pigeons and rats away, it may be that this morning happened. »

« It is terrible that this happened, but I have nothing to do with it, » WM said during his trial on Wednesday morning. The former Paracommando heard how the Public Prosecution Service demanded eighteen months in prison and a fine of 8,000 for him due to unintentional success and injuries.

« The burden of proof is imaginative, » he continued. « Yes, I already had the air pressure rifle. But that is one with which I can shoot a maximum of thirty meters away, the victim was sixty meters away. They make the greatest difficulty in labeling me as a great liar, but the facts speak for themselves. »

The victim indicated that she still has a lot of pain to this day. « Constant. If I work, drive the car or just straight, I always feel that pain. »

The verdict will follow on 25 June.