Linesman killers in court

Linesman Richard Nieuwenhuizen (41) was allegedly kicked several times in the head by enraged youth players shortly after the final whistle at an amateur game in December.
The linesman died shortly afterwards in hospital, leading to much soul-searching in the football-mad Netherlands, while the teenaged boys and one of their fathers were charged with manslaughter.

Prosecutor Joost Zeilstra told the court: “All eight are suspected of being accomplices in Robert Nieuwenhuizen’s manslaughter.”
“He was kicked in the head, neck and body, resulting in death.”

“This business has really affected the Netherlands because someone was beaten up on a football field, somewhere you normally go to have fun,” said prosecution spokeswoman Jetty Bult.

“Five days of hearings are planned, which is fairly exceptional. But this is a complicated affair, there are lots of suspects and it’s about establishing what happened very quickly, in a minute, based on testimony,” she said.

Most of the accused teens’ parents were in court, with journalists only allowed to follow proceedings from a video screen next door because of the age of most of the defendants.
Nieuwenhuizen’s widow and one of their sons had arrived at the court arm-in-arm, declining to speak to journalists.

A renowned British pathologist testified for the defence that the victim may have died of other causes, including a spontaneous, fatal tear in his carotid artery, which delivers blood to the brain through the neck.

Christopher Milroy, a former chief forensic pathologist in Britain who is now a forensic pathology professor at Ottawa University in Canada, found an anomaly in the artery that in rare cases could lead to death.

Milroy is one of four expert witnesses — two requested by the defence and two for the prosecution — to take the stand on Wednesday.
The experts disagreed on the likelihood that the anomaly, which has only been known about for a few years and affects one or two people in 100 000, could have killed Nieuwenhuizen.

However, the anomaly can only be noted through a genetic analysis of the corpse, which is not authorised in Dutch courts.
The Dutch Forensic Institute (NFI), which conducted part of the autopsy, concluded in its report that it was “highly likely that the linesman died of kicks to the head and neck” during the December 2 assault, the NRC newspaper reported. — AFP.