Dutch Teen Soccer Players Charged in Death of Linesman
Reports in Holland indicate that several members of an amateur soccer team have been charged in the death of a volunteer soccer official after the players attacked the linesman after a game with another club.
Linesman Richard Nieuwenhuizen was pronounced dead by doctors a day after he was attacked and beaten by players after a soccer match. Nieuwenhuizen was pronounced dead at 5.30 p.m. local time on Monday in a hospital in Nieuwegein, according to a statement offered by his club, the Buitenboys.
"The Dutch Football Association is deeply shocked. After intervention of the police and the arrival of an ambulance, he was in critical condition and transported to a hospital. There he died Monday afternoon," reported the website of the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB).
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Three Dutch soccer players, two 15-year-olds and one 16-year-old, have been arrested by Dutch police for their role in the officials' death. The 41-year-old had been a linesman during an amateur game in the Dutch city of Almere that showcased the Buitenboys and Amsterdam-based Nieuwe Sloten.
"It is too crazy for words that somebody involved in a sporting hobby becomes a victim of this kind of aggression," Anton Binnenmars, director of the Royal Netherlands Football Association, said in a statement.
"Let me, on behalf of the entire KNVB and all its members, offer my sympathy to the families and friends of the victim. It is outrageous that someone enjoying a hobby can be victim of such aggression," he added.
The soccer club Nieuwe Sloten issued a statement on its website that explained the organization would offer their help with the ongoing police investigation, adding that anyone involved in the attack would be expelled from the team. Nieuwe Sloten also said that it had canceled all of its team's matches, in all age divisions, for the upcoming weekend.
"Violence should not be on the football fields. And certainly not against referees, linesmen and all those others who volunteer each year to over a million amateur footballers. We must do everything possible to eliminate these excesses," a representative of Nieuwe Sloten said in a statement.
