Report: Bizarre Leeuwarden murder, attacks were “avoidable”

The psychiatric clinic that treated 38 year old Udo D., the man arrested on Monday for murdering one woman and attacking another three in Leeuwarden that same day, had legal means to hold him for longer.

This is according to research done by newspaper AD.

Udo D. turned himself in to the police on Monday shortly after he killed a woman on the street by repeatedly hitting her over the head with a bottle. A short time before that he threatened a woman at a supermarket and tried to steal her car, attacked a woman in a parking garage and tried to steal her handbag and slashed a prostitute's throat.

According to the newspaper, the institutions involved in D.'s psychiatric treatment claim that they released him because there were no legal options to hold him longer. Their research found, however, that the Amsterdam court ruled on July 10th that D. could be forcibly admitted to a clinic until January next year, because he poses a risk to society.

Nevertheless, mental health institution GGZ Friesland, where D. was admitted, raised no objections when D. wanted to be released less than a month later. The institution believes that D. would have won any lawsuit he filed. But one of those involved told the newspaper that the institution's reasoning does not make sense. The medical director can always refuse a patient's request to be released. The patient himself would have to appeal to the court.

"The clinic failed here and made a serious error in judgement", the source said. "I think they just let this dangerous man loose on the street because he was unmanageable."