It seems that one of the five young people arrested for the murder of the Almoradí truck driver in Belgium, who are accused of throwing a manhole cover from a bridge, smashing through the windscreen of the truck, and causing the death of driver Gheorghe Tibil, had previously fired a compressed air gun at a parked tourist. This was shown by a video circulating on social networks and published by the Belgian media company Sudinfo.
According to the media company, L.M. was also the person who threw the sewer lid from the bridge above the E42, killing the truck driver, who minutes earlier had relieved his fiancée, also a driver, and who managed to stop the vehicle after the tragedy.
Currently, three 18-year-olds are being held in prison while L.M., 17, is being held in a youth detention centre in Saint-Hubert. The second minor from amongst the five detainees was allowed to return to his home, although he is subject to a family maintenance order.
B.V.’s mother, one of the three 18-year-olds who are locked up, says her son “is not a criminal.” “He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong people,” adding that “he didn’t throw that lid.”
According to information from an alleged judicial leak, L.M. reportedly challenged his friends to throw the sewer lid together from the bridge, although the minor now denies it.
The rural municipality of Andenne, where the teenagers live, is distressed. “These guys didn’t pose a danger to anyone before,” Donovan, a boy who says he knows all five well, told local media.
However, others say they have not been greatly surprised by their arrest: “Honest? This doesn’t surprise us. Other village boys, colleagues of the arrested, don’t paint the reputation of the five very well.
Another local girl doesn’t draw a flattering image of the group’s “leader.” “He has already made some serious mistakes,” she said, adding that “he is unbearable and also usually uses drugs.” On the night of the tragedy the five had been consuming nitrous oxide, known as the “laughing gas.”
Two other youngsters have since been arrested, a minor boy and an 18-year-old girl, who were arrested last Thursday following another incident. Both allegedly participated in events similar to those that killed the Almoradí driver.
According to Het Laatste Nieuws, another trucker had also been the victim of a drainage deck thrown from the same E42 bridge, two days before the fatal accident of Gheorghe Tibil, although in his case there was only material damage to his vehicle. The prosecution quickly established a link between these two cases.
As part of the investigation into Tibil’s death, Judge Marc Depasse, ruled that the three main suspects will remain in pretrial detention for another month.
After initially being described as a murder, the events were reclassified as malicious obstruction of transit with the circumstance that it caused one death, a similar charge to manslaughter.
On Wednesday, May 22, Fabio Marasti and Laetitia Joiris were lucky to escape injury. Their vehicle was hit by a rock while travelling on the E42 motorway, between Dison and Verviers, the same road on which Gheorghe Tibil lost his life.
“Be careful if you pass under the highway bridge between Dison and Rechain, towards Verviers,” Fabio posted on her social media. “We wanted to raise people’s awareness. They don’t realize it. It’s a game for them but it can cost others their lives,” warns Laetitia Joiris, who was in the passenger seat at the time of the impact.
“We heard a huge boom, we didn’t know what it was,” says Laetitia Joiris. “Pieces of glass fell on our heads and then we saw the hole in the sunroof. We didn’t see anyone, we didn’t have time to look. Everything happened so quickly. People told us they’d seen a number of young people running away.”
The couple wants to raise awareness of the seriousness of the action. They say that they were the lucky ones. “A few seconds earlier, the stone could have hit the windscreen with far more serious consequences.”
Meanwhile, the widow of Almoradí’s trucker who was killed by the vandals in Belgium said, “I will be traumatized for the rest of my life.”
