Death of Richard Nieuwenhuizen
Richard Nieuwenhuizen (aged 41) was a Dutch man who was attacked and fatally injured on 2 December 2012 after serving as a volunteer linesman at a youth football match in Almere in which his youngest son was playing for the home team.
[1] In hospital his condition worsened and he died the following evening, 3 December, as a result of the injury to his head,[1][2][3][4][5] which had led to an infarct in a damaged vertebral artery.
[14] The defendants had argued that Nieuwenhuizen's death was due to a medical condition known as segmental mediolytic arteriopathy, with testimony by a British forensic pathologist, Christopher Milroy, who performed an autopsy on the body.
[14][19] Because El-Hasan D. was on welfare so that he could not comply with payment arrangements and the other convicts also asserted they could not pay the damages, members of his family posted a letter on Facebook in "a desperate call for [financial] help".
The authors of the letter assert that he "only tried to calm things down and to put an end to a trifle on the football field and that cost him dearly", and that he desperately tried to prove his innocence, but "that yielded nothing in this 'fair' country" because the judge refused to look at the specifics of the case.
It gave rise to a television programme, Heibel langs de lijn (Trouble at the touchline), on which parents' behaviour is shown at their children's request.
[1] There had also been a previous death a year earlier in Amsterdam, when a youth football player kicked a 77-year-old supporter of the opposing team in the chest, but that was ruled voluntary manslaughter.
[1] The KNVB had already introduced a programme to help amateur clubs promote respect, additional training for referees, mandatory punishment for players abusing officials, and a disciplinary committee which reviews incidents after each weekend.
For example, in February 2016, the Chairman of the Surrey Youth League warned parents that if the violence at the touchline continues to escalate, there may be lethal consequences, writing: "Don’t believe it wouldn’t happen.
Shortly after the incident, Dutch politician Geert Wilders tweeted that Moroccans were responsible for the violence in youth football, and that the large number of immigrants in Nieuw-West was a factor in discussions after the attack on Nieuwenhuizen.
[33] In April 2016, sports commentator Johan Derksen remarked that some amateur clubs suffer damage from a high percentage of players with a Moroccan background.
[34] Nieuw Sloten itself was again in the news two months prior to Derksen's remark, when a referee had to be brought to safety after being attacked by players,[35] after which the club immediately suspended the team involved.
[36] This line of reasoning has since been followed by other courts in situations where groups engaged in hooliganism or racist crimes, and in the case of two robbers who were accusing each other of causing a lethal driving accident and had previously both been acquitted as there was insufficient evidence to determine which of the two was the driver.
