Man attacked with stone in Rotterdam wakens from coma

The man who had a heavy stone thrown on his head while he was sleeping on the street in Rotterdam last week has awoken from his coma, his half-sister, Amy Boekhoudt, said on the talk show Bar Laat. Her brother is awake, but still unable to communicate, she said.

The man was sleeping on the street near the Maritime Museum when another man walked up and threw a heavy stone onto his head, leaving him critically injured.

Boekhoudt denied previous reports that her brother was homeless. The 37-year-old man has a disability and typically lives in a residential group, she said. A few days before the attack, he decided to leave the group and sleep on the street. “Because he did not want to bother people with his problems,” she said. “Nobody knows what happened during those days.”

A crowdfunding campaign raised nearly 30,000 euros for the Rotterdam victim so that he could “receive the best care possible and is never forced to sleep on the streets again.”

The police in France arrested a 32-year-old man from Cameroon on Tuesday for an attack in Lyon, in which a homeless man was killed with a large stone. The Rotterdam police confirmed that the suspect is also wanted for the attack in Rotterdam.