‘Hij had haar natuurlijk nooit moeten duwen, maar hij heeft Asperger.’
‘Of course he should never have pushed her, but he has Asperger.’
Ladybug, symbol against ‘pointless violence’
Last Thursday, a female parking warden in duty was attacked by a thirty-year-old man who became angry because he thought she was about to give his mother’s car a parking ticket. The mother had parked her car in a spot outside the range of her parking licence where there was no free parking.
The man pushed the parking warden who fell, bumped her head on the pavement and passed out. Hague alderman Peter Smit reacted furiously to the assault in a comment and the media followed suit: “Another case of pointless violence aimed at public servants in the execution of their duties”.
The man’s mother phoned up Radio West on Friday morning when the incident was publicly discussed, saying that she was deeply sorry for what happened and stated that this should never have happened: “Of course he should never have pushed her, but he has Asperger.”
This Sunday, there was a serious scuffle after a soccer match in Alphen when the Alphen team lost against a Rijswijk team. Supporters kicked and hit a defenceless soccer player who had fallen on the ground. Police had to intervene.
Two recent cases of violence that caused an outrage in the media. Two apparently similar cases but with different causes. What the angry man with Asperger syndrome did to the poor parking warden, is deplorable.
The question is, can we put an incident caused by a disorder in the same category of violence as the mad behaviour of the frantic soccer supporters? Let’s look before we leap and call something ‘zinloos geweld’, pointless violence.