He can no longer speak or walk on his own. Gerhard Diek ( aged 65) has epileptic seizures again and again – and he doesn’t remember anything…
After a brutal assault and several operations, the ex-excavator driver from Alsdorf has only half a head left.
Now the Aachen Regional Court passed a sentence against his two tormentors ( aged 29): The men got off with six months probation for dangerous bodily harm – because in the end the judge could not say exactly who kicked Diek. And: The men only have to pay a fraction of the demanded compensation for pain and suffering – 60,000 euros for a destroyed life!
“My husband only sits in a wheelchair or lies on the couch,” says his wife Silvia (53). “That’s all he can do. But I don’t want to place him in a nursing home. I’ll take care of him until the end.”
The crime that changed the couple’s lives happened more than four years ago. On June 8, 2018, Gerhard Diek wanted to settle a dispute between young men in front of a kiosk in Alsdorf. According to the indictment, an attacker kicked him in the chest in kung-fu style, and the excavator driver fell with his head on the asphalt. Several surgical operations followed. The brain was partially dead and had to be removed.
After the verdict, his wife is shocked: “That is far too little. I am stunned, also by the low amount of compensation for pain and suffering,” says Silvia Diek. “My lawyer demanded 200,000 euros.”
That is why Silvia Diek now wants to appeal against the verdict: “I hope that my husband will be alive to see a new verdict.”