No punishment for man who threatened daycare operators with death (Ichtegem)

A 27-year-old Ichtegem resident has been convicted on appeal for threatening the operators of a daycare with death. However, he was not punished.

During the corona crisis, the child from Ichtegemnaar CV could not go to daycare for a few days. The operators still sent an invoice for those days, but CV refused to pay it. This resulted in a civil lawsuit in which the court ruled in favor of the operators and CV therefore had to pay the invoice. However, the twenty-year-old sent his cat to that trial and the verdict was seriously wrong.

First, the man threatened to post negative reviews of the daycare online. But he changed his mind and sent several messages to the operators on August 18 and 19, 2022, threatening them with death. “Sue me. One day I will meet you and destroy you. I know where you live and I will kill you,” he said bluntly.

The prosecutor’s office tried to resolve the case through mediation. But CV did not want to cooperate. For example, he did not see the point of an aggression management course. “I do not have time for that. And it makes no sense, because aggression is in my genes,” he said. After he was sentenced in absentia to eight months in prison, this was converted into a suspension by the Court of Appeal. If the man does not have another conviction in the next three years, he will not be punished.