A man was therefore arrested following a neighborhood dispute that went wrong on Sunday in Grez-Doiceau, we learned on Monday from the Walloon Brabant prosecutor’s office. The file was put under investigation and a request for an arrest warrant was made for the suspect. The latter stabbed two neighbors, one of whom died.
The facts were perpetrated, Sunday at the beginning of the followingnoon, in the district of the avenue des Sapins, in the Walloon Brabant entity of Grez-Doiceau. Against the background of a quarrel linked to a palisade, a local resident born in 1964 violently attacked two of his neighbors.
This is not the first time that a neighborhood dispute has escalated, and yet there are other means, other remedies, which make it possible to avoid coming to this, when there is a disagreement.
René (assumed first name), lives in an apartment in Brussels. For 6 years, his neighbor hijacked the building’s heating system. He heated himself at the expense of the condominium.
“I’m not going to lie to you, it’s boring. We talk regarding it every day. These are people we have to live with, that we meet in the elevator. We are constantly on our guard, constantly suspicious. Today it was the heating, another day it might very well be something else. he confides.
Two solutions when faced with a problem with a neighbour: either the municipality and its mediator who facilitates communication, or the police and its neighborhood agent who settles the dispute.
“Taking a mediation approach is betting that we can find a solution together, that we can work things out. When I go to see the police, we are in a conflict that will crystallize. police so that it decides and sanctions the other party”, says Roland Prévot, coordinator of the mediation service at the municipality of Schaerbeek.
For more than 20 years, the 19 municipalities of Brussels have had a mediation service. There are 20 in Wallonia, mainly near Liège and Charleroi
For some neighbours, it is impossible to solve the problem without the intervention of a third party. It is then up to the justice of the peace to decide.
“The justice of the peace will either manage to reconcile the neighbors or render a judgment following having heard the parties. This judgment will indicate what should be done”, specifies Luc Hennart, the spokesperson for the Brussels Court of Appeal.
If the neighbors come to blows. The dispute then becomes the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system.
