Delft gangs recruiting nine-year-olds

Children barely tall enough to see over a car bonnet are being pulled into gang life in Delft — some as young as nine, sent to steal and surrender their loot to underworld leaders.

And now, in a fast-spreading new trend, the kids who call themselves the Terrible Hooker Boys are swarming delivery vans, ripping open doors and making off with packages in seconds.

They are so brazen that they are even stripping the Centre for Community Development in The Hague and using it as their “gang den”.

This comes as the Mother City reels from a wave of gang violence that has left at least six children shot in the past week. Four have died.

Local Delft Ward 13 councillor Michelle Adonis said things were now “out of hand”, with gangs running amok.

She said: “There’s definitely a gang–citizen problem here within the Delft area.

"And the scary part is, the group members are as young as nine years old.

“Those kids, whenever there is a truck, they jump on the truck, they open it up, they take out the stuff and they run.

"Then you will see the bigger guys that are operating with them... that is the scary part.”

Adonis said many of the children have already dropped out of school, with little parental supervision and no structured activities keeping them off the streets.

She said incidents of theft and robbery along major routes such as Silver Sand Road have become routine, with criminals grabbing cellphones and targeting passing vehicles.

While the motive behind the children’s involvement remains unclear, Adonis believes the looted goods are often handed over to older gangsters.

“It might be that they give it to the bigger ones who are the leaders,” she said.

“Or their brothers, as they call them.”

One recent tragedy paints a picture of the deadly danger these children are exposed to.

She said: “We had a gruesome death that happened on this main road.

"One of those kids fell from the truck trying to open it. The door swung open, he fell, and then another car drove over.

“It stopped for a while, and then they started again.”