Shooting in Antwerp Suburb Leaves Man Critically Injured, Drug Link Suspected

It was around 10 p.m. on Tuesday that the police were alerted to a shooting on Lageweg in Hoboken. According to witnesses, an unknown person would have rung the door of the L. family, shooting at close range on a 27-year-old man, hitting him in the leg before fleeing.

According to the Gazet Van Antwerpen, it is Abdelhalim L., who recently settled in Hoboken. But it was his brother, a young criminal on the run in Morocco, who was the target. A neighbor intervened to stop the bleeding and would have saved Abdelhalim’s life by his action, who was taken in serious condition to the hospital where he was placed in an artificial coma. He has since come out of this coma and is slowly recovering.

Given the frequency with which these attacks have been perpetrated in Antwerp in recent months, the public prosecutor’s office immediately seized the case, suspecting that the matter is related to the drug environment.

Abdelhalim L. is not known in the criminal environment. He is an ordinary employee who works for the De Lijn public transport service in Antwerp and has no criminal record. The man is a family man and holds two jobs to pay off the mortgage on his house. But the same cannot be said of his brother Abderrahim L., the probable target of this attack, as he is well known in the drug environment. He is suspected of having received between 90,000 and 130,000 euros to organize a cocaine trafficking, but would have stolen the money and fled. He is currently believed to be hiding in Morocco. His brother would be the victim of an act of revenge.