Dad Throws Chair at Judge Over “Absurdly Low” Sentence for the Driver Who Killed His Little Girl

By: Rahaan Mazumder Published: October 4, 2026 – 12:30 pm Rahaan Mazumder October 4, 2026 Add MotorBiscuit as a preferred source If there was ever a courtroom video that universally made the internet collectively nod and say, “Yeah, that reaction was justified,” it is the infamous 2014 footage of a Dutch father launching a chair at a judge.

The video, which still frequently resurfaces across social media platforms, captures the raw, unfiltered explosion of a grieving father who just realized the justice system had completely failed his family. But what the short video clip doesn’t show is the agonizing backstory, the eventual appeal, and a bizarre series of recent legal updates that sparked a genuine political scandal in the Netherlands.

The incident took place in a Roermond courtroom in November 2014. Standing trial was a Polish driver who, on May 19, 2013, lost control of his vehicle in the Dutch town of Meijel and plowed into a bicycle path. The crash killed three people: a two-year-old girl named Iza, and her 67- and 64-year-old grandparents.

Despite eyewitness reports and skid marks indicating the driver was traveling at speeds up to 120 km/h in a 50 km/h to 80 km/h zone, the initial judge ruled that there wasn’t enough definitive proof that speeding caused the crash, rather than an unpredictable loss of vehicular control.

As a result, the driver was cleared of manslaughter and convicted of a lesser endangerment charge.

The judge declared that based on similar cases, the suspect would be given an unconditional community service order of just 120 hours, or alternatively, 60 days in custody.

Upon hearing that the deaths of his daughter and parents-in-law amounted to a few weeks of community service, the father, Erik Derijks, completely snapped. He grabbed a heavy courtroom chair, vaulted it over the desks toward the judge’s bench, and screamed in agony as security guards swarmed him to drag him out of the chaotic room.

The Aftermath and the Appeal Derijks later told the press that he essentially “blacked out” from grief and anger in that moment. Interestingly, because the judge understood the immense emotional weight of the situation, she never filed a formal complaint against him, and he was not prosecuted for the outburst.

The legal case against the driver, however, was far from over.

The absurdly low 120-hour sentence caused massive public outrage, leading prosecutors to file an immediate appeal. In September 2015, a higher Court of Appeal reviewed the technical evidence and reached a much harsher conclusion. They found that the driver had been driving recklessly and speeding excessively. The court threw out the community service and sentenced him to 15 months in a Dutch prison, along with a four-year driving ban.

If you think a 15-month sentence was finally closure for the Derijks family, the Dutch justice system had one more brutal plot twist.

Instead of serving his time, the driver fled to the United Kingdom. He was tracked down, arrested, and formally extradited back to the Netherlands in August 2016 to finally sit in a cell.

However, in May 2017, the story hit the Dutch headlines again. After serving barely nine months of his 15-month sentence, the driver applied for early release so he could return to Poland to be with his girlfriend, who was giving birth to their child.

In a move that infuriated Dutch legislators and the public, the Ministry of Justice granted the early release. The council argued that keeping him locked up served no further purpose, explicitly noting that the man had already suffered heavily from the “punitive nature of media coverage” surrounding the case.

He was released and deported, leaving the devastated father to once again process a legal system that seemingly prioritized the perpetrator’s comfort over a family’s destroyed reality.

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Home » Dad Throws Chair at Judge Over “Absurdly Low” Sentence for the Driver Who Killed His Little Girl

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