Assailant Van Bommel receives four-year prison sentence

On the night of Oct. 24-25, the Antwerp coach was met in his parking garage by the 25-year-old Somali with a firearm. Van Bommel then quickly drove backwards out of the garage, colliding with another car. The robber ran off when the alarm went off.

After the failed robbery the police found a transmitter on Van Bommel’s Porsche with which the car could be followed. The assailant would have placed it there just before the incident.

After examining the tracker and camera footage in the neighborhood, police arrived at the Somali man, who was staying in a nearby asylum seekers’ center.

Police initially thought the suspect was after Van Bommel’s expensive car. But an audio file was found on the perpetrator’s phone in which text had been translated from Arabic to English.

With this, according to the court, he wanted to threaten the trainer. “Listen Mark, your family’s life depends on this,” that message read. “Let me become a professional player. Don’t go to the police, we will kill you and your family. We know where you live.”