Ad Bierens was very shocked on Sunday afternoon. Suddenly videos appeared everywhere of his cousin Appie (49) who exploded a cobra in his hand outside the PSV stadium. Ad immediately saw that it was very bad.
“I have to inform his mother, was the first thing I thought,” Ad says a day later. “His mother is a bit older and I have to go to her to tell her what happened.” In the meantime, Ad also tried to find out where they had taken Appie. “When his mother and I arrived at the hospital, Appie was on the operating table.
In a photo from that Sunday evening, Appie looks almost cheerful in his hospital bed and Ad noticed that too. “I think a combination of adrenaline, alcohol, anesthesia and painkillers. I don’t think he fully realized yet what exactly had happened. He keeps himself very big and doesn’t show what it’s doing to him. He said very coolly that ‘he would go to the ceremony on Monday and asked when he could go back to work, but that is still a long way off.’
“It will later become clear what Appie can do with the remaining fingers.”
“He had his first operation on Sunday,” Ad explains. “Then they did what was absolutely necessary. This week Appie will have to have a few more operations. The blow left him missing his index and middle fingers and part of his thumb. It will become clear later what he can do with the remaining fingers. Because that’s how Appie is in it. It’s happened, there’s nothing he can do about it anymore. Now he wants to see how to proceed.”
Appie, or Albert, is now 49 years old and works as a garbage collector four days a week. “He can be happy if that right hand still works somewhat,” Ad thinks. “But there is no sensible word to say about that yet.”
Why Appie picked up a burning cobra is a mystery to Ad and he didn’t really get an answer to that question from Appie himself. “He already received real torches in his hands from those guys at De Aftrap,” says Ad. “He probably wanted to join their party and may have made a mistake when he saw those smoking fireworks on the ground.”
“But, I said, a torch has much more smoke and a colored flame. But, he had no answer to that either. He picked it up, which can clearly be seen on a video. And that cobra was not, as some claim, pressed into his hands.”
Ad Bierens cannot get over the fact that such a heavy piece of fireworks was thrown into the audience. “It’s crazy that you bring a cobra to the stadium.”
