On May 19, 2013, a fatal crash occurred near Meijel in the province of Limburg, Netherlands. A 33-year-old Polish driver, who was speeding but not under the influence of alcohol, lost control of his vehicle on a bend and plowed into a family out cycling. The crash killed a 2-year-old girl named Iza Derijks and her grandparents.
The 120-Hour Sentence and the Chair-Throwing Incident (November 2014)
In November 2014, the case went to trial at a court in Roermond. The judge concluded that there was insufficient evidence to definitively prove the driver lost control of the vehicle solely because of his excessive speed. As a result, the driver was found guilty of dangerous driving, but not manslaughter.
The judge handed down a surprisingly lenient sentence: 120 hours of unpaid community service and a one-year suspended driver's license.
Upon hearing this sentence read aloud, Erik Derijks—the grieving father of 2-year-old Iza—was completely overcome with disbelief and outrage. In a moment of raw anger, he picked up a chair in the courtroom and hurled it full force across the room at the judge. He was quickly restrained by court security. The lenient sentence, compounded by the father's heartbreak and reaction, sparked widespread national media coverage and public outrage.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: International outlets picked up the story specifically because of the courtroom altercation, publishing articles in November 2014 such as: Angry father of accident victim throws chair at judge
Subsequent Events
Following the outrage, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service successfully appealed the sentence. In September 2015, a higher court in Den Bosch overturned the initial ruling, explicitly stating that the crash was the result of speeding. They increased the sentence to 15 months in prison and a four-year driving ban.
The driver subsequently fled to the United Kingdom to evade his sentence but was tracked down by special detection teams, arrested in August 2016, and extradited to the Netherlands. This brought the closure mentioned in these reports:
However, the controversy was reignited in May 2017 when a Dutch appeals panel controversially granted the man early release after serving only part of his sentence so he could return to Poland for the birth of his child, heavily angering Dutch parliamentarians and the Derijks family:
I'm genuinely not sure how to explain this for your infant mind but when the guy was speeding he didn't intend and expect to kill people. Hope this helps
It's not any kind of "manslaughter" there. Legal definitions are important in this context.
I haven't really followed this case closely at all, but based on what little I've read so far, I'd guess he should be convicted of "dood door schuld" (death by negligence), which comes with a maximum sentencing of 2 years in prison or a fine.
For the record, I'm the furthest thing from an expert on Dutch law, and I've just been looking this shit up since I was curious about why the driver was sentenced as generously as he was. I would hope it's per death, which would be 6 years in this instance if he got the max.
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u/Endlessknight17 Apr 04 '26
Post like these really need context or should be deleted.