A 15-year-old boy from Schijndel has been identified as a suspect in the
assault on cyclist Arvid de Kleijn (Tudor) in April. At the time, de Kleijn was attacked by a group of about ten youths, all of whom have been questioned. One 15-year-old boy from that group has now been questioned in connection with the incident.
The police
told Omroep Brabant that the other youths, who all came forward on their own after the police issued a call for them, are not suspects. “They have all been interviewed as witnesses, but are not suspects in the case.”
That certainly applies to the 15-year-old boy from Schijndel—the “perpetrator,” in other words. “He is suspected of having struck the cyclist,” said a police spokesperson. It is now up to the Public Prosecutor’s Office to decide what will happen to the boy.
Read more below the photo.
Arvid de Kleijn during the Tour de France.
De Kleijn spoke about the incident in May
In May, De Kleijn told
De Telegraaf his story about the incident, which, understandably, had really shaken him up. “I was training and hadn’t realized for a moment that it was Paaspop [a major Dutch festival, ed.]. I rode past a group of ten boys, around 15, 16, or 17 years old. They hurled insults at me, referring to the disease my father died from.”
"I turned around then to start a conversation: why were they using that word as an insult, and why were they getting so worked up in the first place? After that, however, things went from bad to worse," said De Kleijn.
"They had been drinking—and maybe even more than that—so it was impossible to have a conversation with them. When I decided to ride away, they started harassing me. One of them, riding a fat bike to my right rear, suddenly swung at me. I was knocked out and broke my nose in the process,” said the cyclist, who had competed in the Tour de France in July but dropped out after a few days.