Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
ACID ATTACK VICTIM’S SUICIDE CLINIC DEATH
Tragic engineer tells of his ordeal from beyond grave
THE victim of a horrific acid attack took his own life rather than live with the unbearable pain of his grisly injuries, a court has heard.
Mark van Dongen, 29, yesterday gave evidence from beyond the grave in a video statement played to jurors.
The Dutch civil engineer lost a leg, his left eye and most sight in his right eye after being doused in sulphuric acid.
He died earlier this year after making a successful application for euthanasia.
Jurors heard his “jealous” ex-girlfriend Berlinah Wallace, 48, had laughed as she threw the corrosive liquid at him, saying: “If I can’t have you, no one can.”
Burns covered 25% of Mark’s body. He was left paralysed from the neck down. The video showed him in hospital last July, face and chest severely disfigured.
He recalled to police Wallace entering their bedroom in Bristol, in September 2015. Mark said: “She woke me up and said that ‘if I can’t have you, no one can’. And she laughed and threw the acid.” He told how he ran down the street in boxer shorts, adding: “They fell off because of the acid. Then I met my upstairs neighbour, she took me in and got the police.”
The court heard he and Wallace had been in a five-year relationship and lived together, but Mark began seeing another woman a month before the attack.
Mark said Wallace did it as “she was jealous, I left her a month before”, adding: “I only went back as I felt sorry for her.”
Bristol crown court was told fashion student Wallace had bought a bottle of acid on Amazon before searching for news stories about acid attack victims.
Mark spent 14 months in hospital. Dr Rachel Oaten said when he looked in a mirror, he screamed: “Kill me now.”
Mark moved to a hospital in Belgium. Consultants agreed he had “unbearable suffering”. His life was taken in January.
Wallace denied murder and applying a corrosive fluid. The trial continues.