A taxi passenger who opened the car door, causing a little girl cycling past to swerve and fall into the path of bus, will be prosecuted for causing a fatal accident, local paper Leidsch Dagblad reported on Friday.

Seven-year-old Doris Karimzedeh had been cycling with her parents along the Steenstraat in Leiden on June 5 when the incident happened.

‘We saw the taxi had stopped. It was mostly in the road, and my husband went ahead telling Doris to keep to the right and to follow him. The door opened slightly and then closed, leading us to believe the driver had seen us.

‘But then it swung open with force, causing Doris to fall. (…). I saw the bus coming and called out stop, stop but it drove on and hit Doris,’ Selda Abyar, the girl’s mother, told the paper.

Locals say the coronavirus regulations at a nearby market led to buses to be rerouted, leaving little space for cyclists. ‘This was an accident waiting to happen,’ one market trader told the paper. ‘There are cars and taxis stopping in the middle of the road, people crossing the road..it’s a madhouse on Saturdays.’

Doris’s mother, who came to the Netherlands from Iran to do a PhD at Leiden University, has now made it her mission to make the streets safer for cycling children, the paper said.

The public prosecution department has not yet set a date for the court hearing.