In association with
Omroep Gelderland
NOS News•today, 1:47 PM
Exactly fifteen years ago today, the Netherlands was shocked by an attack during Queen’s Day. During the parade of the royal family, Karst T. drove a car through a group of spectators who were watching along the side of the road.
Eight people were killed. Then-mayor Fred de Graaf of Apeldoorn looks back on that pitch-black day at Omroep Gelderland. The former mayor still remembers the day in question, April 30, 2009, clearly. He calls the events the most drastic he has experienced during his time as mayor.
“I became icy cold,” says former mayor De Graaf:
Former mayor looks back on Queen’s Day attack
De Graaf sat in an open bus with the royal family. “I heard a huge bang and I thought: ‘Oh dear, a grandstand is collapsing or something.” But it was T. who hit seventeen people with his car and came to a stop against the De Naald statue. “The queen and I remained seated. For the same amount of money, there were several perpetrators. The queen turned blank, and so did I, I think.”
“The driver of the bus was instructed to accelerate and drive quickly towards the palace. The children were standing along the side of the driveway and of course had not seen anything yet,” he remembers.
Cancelled
The mayor then had to make the difficult decision to cancel the rest of the festivities. “Then you are really alone. There is no one else there at that moment. Then you stand in front of the palace and you have to announce that the exercise is over.”
In retrospect, that was not an easy choice, he says. “From that moment on you run on intuition. I became icy cold and I went into a kind of survival mode to do the things I had to do as mayor. It was only the next morning, when I read the terrible photos and the headlines, that the emotion came loose.”
