Chef who hit intern with car took a photo before calling emergency services

Chef Nick Bril, who hit an intern at his two-Michelin-starred restaurant The Jane with his car in January, waited about 10 minutes between running over the man and calling the emergency services, AD reports. He only called when a passerby asked him about it and after taking a picture of the critically injured intern, 37-year-old Joe Claridge, the newspaper wrote.

The accident happened at 6:21 a.m. on January 8, after the afterparty following The Jane’s launch of a new menu. According to AD, Claridge had quite a lot to drink at the party and was waiting for a taxi, leaning against a fence on Paradeplein in Antwerp. At one point, he fell and ended up lying behind Bril’s parked Land Rover Defender. Bril came out, got into his car, and drove right over the man twice. Claridge was critically injured and spent several weeks in a coma.

According to AD, the Michelin-star chef waited ten minutes before calling the emergency services. “Judicial services confirm this,” the newspaper wrote. He had his phone with him because he took a photo of the critically injured man lying on the ground before making the call. He only called at 6:31 a.m., when a jogger came past and asked him if he had.

About 15 minutes after calling for first responders, while they were working on Claridge, Bril also sent a remarkable text to his team. “Guys, I just finished with our new intern. Complete KO. An ambulance and the police, everything involved. I don’t think we’ll keep Joe as an intern.” He never mentioned that he had run over the man with his all-terrain vehicle weighing more than two tons.

In texts to his friends and family, he also claimed that he had just found Claridge lying injured in front of his car. He later told the police that he could not remember the accident. “Because I was in shock. The first moment I remember is that I was standing with Joe,” he said, according to AD’s sources. “The next clear moment, I was in the combi. It then started to dawn on me that it could be my fault.”

The investigation into what happened is still ongoing.