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Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Wildfeuer)
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Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Wildfeuer)
Wednesday, 24 August 2016 - 15:10
Father of killed toddler: Polish fugitive's arrest brings "closure"
Erik Derijks from Heesch and his wife are pleased about the arrest of the Polish man who hit their 2-year-old daughter and her grandparents with his car in Meijel, Limburg in 2013. "We are pleased that he will serve his sentence", he said to Omroep Brabant. "Now there's a line under the legal part. That is important for closure."
The 35-year-old Polish man was arrested in England last week and extradited to the Netherlands on Tuesday. Here he will serve the 439 days he has left of the 15 months prison sentence he got in the appeal in the case against him.
On May 19th, 2013 he hit 2-year-old Ize and her grandparents with his car. All three died. The tragedy was followed by a long drawn out legal battle and criminal case, which ended in the Polish man first being given community service and then a prison sentence on appeal.
The accident happened more than three years ago now. "The mourning and loss stay with you", young Ize's father said to the broadcaster. "The accident obviously casts a shadow on our lives, but we try to make something of it. It is a cliche, but we have to go on."
"Pain and grief we carry in our hearts. We go to bed with it and we get up with it", Derijks said. "But that he is going to jail, now provides relief."