In association with
Rijnmond
NOS News•today, 8:37 PM
The Vlaardingen plumber who has been the target of attacks for a year now has no plans to move. He said this in an extensive interview with the regional broadcaster Rijnmond.
The plumber, Ron van Uffelen, contacted the broadcaster himself, partly because he is angry with the situation and with the mayor of Vlaardingen. “Mayor Wijbenga? He is just looking for something to prove that I am wrong. I have already had four police raids, with drug and gun dogs present. Nothing has been found. I am not a saint or anything. But I am not who he thinks I am.”
Since April last year, more than ten attacks with heavy fireworks have been committed on the plumber, on his business premises, his company cars and his home. The police arrested six people. Yesterday one of them was sentenced to fourteen months in prison.
Last weekend a fire bomb was thrown into the home of the plumber’s relatives. The house was completely destroyed on the inside. One of his nephews was in intensive care for two days, the broadcaster writes. Van Uffelen calls that “very bad”. “This is another step further in the misery,” he says.
The suspects and the convicted person have not released anything about a motive or a client. Van Uffelen says he really doesn’t know either. “The reason must be that someone doesn’t like me. But who is that? I don’t know. I haven’t received a letter and I’m not being extorted either. There was only a banner once. It said ‘pay’ on it.”
He admits that he is not always a sweetheart. “I have sometimes used drugs and have also had loose hands. I was always there in the catering industry, so to speak. But I am not a dealer or a drug criminal.”
List of possible clients
He also tells Rijnmond that a few years ago he fought with Marco E., one of the most wanted criminals in Europe. He would not say what the argument was about.
The fugitive E. is therefore on his list of potential clients for the attacks. “But it could just as easily be someone else. Someone I fired, for example. I have drawn up a list and I have also given it to the police. What we are doing now is checking off. There may have already been ten people in the picture. The police visited some of them, and I visited some of them. Even the Caloh Wagoh motorcycle club. But they turned out to have nothing to do with it. Now there are still a few left.”
The plumber is staying in a hotel and has an area ban for two neighborhoods in Vlaardingen. “I don’t understand that. It would be for safety. But I have never been near the place where an explosive went off.”
Residents of Vlaardingen, especially local residents, have been worried for months, some are downright scared. But Van Uffelen doesn’t think moving is an option. “That’s shifting the problem. If I come to live next to you, what then? Are you happy?” He says to his current neighbors and neighbors: “I find it incredibly annoying for them. One hundred percent. And it’s really bad that it’s all related to me.”
