Driver gets five years in prison for killing boy, 4, in Maastricht

The district court (rechtbank) in Roermond sentenced Janus K., 30, of Maastricht to five years in prison on Wednesday for killing a 4-year-old boy, Djorginyo, on 27 March. The sentence equals the demand of the Public Prosecution Service. The court ruled that reckless driving caused the fatal crash.

He is also banned from driving for five years (rijontzegging). He drove 112 km/h in a built-up area where the limit was 50. Tests after the crash showed 1.8 per mille of alcohol in his blood; the legal limit is 0.5.

Around 19.10, the boy and his mother got off a bus. She put him in a buggy and began crossing the Dorpstraat. Before they reached the other side, K., driving a borrowed black Mazda with a passenger, hit them. The boy died the next day. His mother was seriously injured: concussion, a broken neck vertebra and several fractures in her pelvis and right lower leg. She has permanent injuries.

K. said he had drunk seven beers in a café with a friend and that the two decided for no reason to "go for a drive". The court called that very hard to understand. "It is extra worrying that he stated he himself thought he was not driving too fast," the ruling says. Forensic research found that K. could have stopped in time had he kept to the speed limit, and the court holds him fully responsible.

K. had earlier struggled with alcohol problems and was in treatment, but dropped out of an addiction programme a few months before the crash. He had no previous convictions for offences of this kind.

At the hearing, the mother said: "When I woke from the coma, I heard that my child was dead. I have to live on with physical limitations, but these visible effects are nothing next to the scar on my heart and missing my child." The father said a part of him died with his son. "He was my best little friend," he said.