Nine months following getting married, Betty (54) and Bart (53), flew to the island of Rhodes, Greece, for what was to be their first real romantic trip. It was July 31. But, as Het Laatste Nieuws explains, their stay turned tragic.
Indeed, while they were traveling on a quad that they had rented to go around the island, the machine experienced a technical problem: “The brake suddenly jammed and we were catapulted above handlebars,” Betty tells our colleagues. If they did not lose consciousness following the shock, she and her companion were still seriously injured.
At first, the couple were rescued by passers-by, including a Dutch doctor, who provided bart with first aid while waiting for the ambulance… which arrived 45 minutes following the accident. Then the journey to the hospital lasted an hour: “The paramedics did nothing to stabilize Bart”, regrets Betty. “He kept saying he was in pain and started vomiting, but they didn’t do anything. On the other hand, they stopped so that the doctors might wash their hands”.
Once at the hospital, Bart was picked up and taken to a room. “He was still breathing. I sat down and while I was waiting, I saw doctors at reception who were shouting, then they were laughing, then they were shouting once more, it was weird. Then ten minutes later, three doctors arrived near me and my said “bad news, your companion died”.
Shock. But not the end of the ordeal. Betty, seriously injured, had to fight to be able to spend the night in the hospital and not in the hotel. The repatriation of the body didn’t go smoothly either: “What was supposed to be our first romantic vacation actually turned into a horror story. What happened in the ambulance and in the hospital is inhuman”.
