On Sunday January 29, the WPR of Vottem had its attention drawn to a VW Polo with five people on board. The vehicle is traveling on the A604 towards Jemeppe. The crew checks, via the communication center, that everything is in order. We can say that the sleuths of the traffic police had a good nose, since the vehicle was reported… stolen!
A few hours earlier, the driver had indeed stolen the keys from the owner, a lady from Seraing, who had previously refused to lend him her car. The man behind the wheel, Jean-Pol (19, from Engis) ignored this refusal and took his friends on board.
Note that in the vehicle was also a 6-month-old baby, simply installed in a bassinet, on the lap of a rear passenger.
The crew logically stopped the vehicle in order to check all these beautiful people. And there again, the police had the “happy hand”. Besides Jean-Pol, there were also two minors. A 15-year-old girl from Liège, who had run away from the IPPJ in Saint-Servais. And another minor who was to join the closed center of Saint-Hubert on January 27. However, he did not show up on time.
Suffice to say that these two have returned to their homes.
He denies
Jean-Pol was obviously heard. He is more of a regular at the exercise, since he has already been in prison for… car thefts, and moreover, that day, had just left Lantin for 6 days. He indicates that he did not steal the vehicle but that it was indeed the owner who was, he says, “in the doldrums”, who lent it to him.
The lady says the exact opposite. The objective was to pick up the mother of the baby present in the car at the Médiacité, where the whole group was shopping, and to drive the child to the Citadelle because it was getting hot. It was while returning the vehicle to its owner that Jean-Pol and his friends were intercepted by the WPR.
Jean-Pol was referred the next morning to the Liège prosecutor’s office. He was, until then, not yet known to the Liège justice system. The case has been put under investigation with a request for an arrest warrant.