A person is dead after being shot on the Bergselaan in Rotterdam last night. While the victim is unknown, one local resident reported hearing bursts of gunfire for up to thirty seconds.
Police said on Twitter that they were called to the area around 22:00 after shots were fired. While the victim was alive when police arrived, they died while on the street.
Rotterdam VVD chairman, Vincent Karremans, lives diagonally opposite to the place of the shooting. He called the shooting “bizarre”. “It is a child-friendly neighbourhood, a normal residential area,” he told RTL Nieuws.
Karremans says he originally thought the noise outside was fireworks, before realising they were gunfire.
Om 22:00 werden meerdere schoten gehoord omgeving #Bergselaan #Rotterdam. Op de hoek met de #Ackersdijkstraat troffen agenten een gewonde man die inmiddels is overleden. Politie start onderzoek. Vermoedelijk twee donker geklede mannen in auto gevlucht. Info of beelden? Bel 112.
— Politie Rotterdam eo (@Politie_Rdam) May 10, 2020
“Then I heard screams and I went outside. People were screaming and crying. There was a man in the street who was being resuscitated. Later he was taken away in a bag.”
Karremans suspects that it could be drug-related. “Of course I’m not sure, but it seems like it. A machine gun and a getaway car … As a society, we have no idea of the misery behind the drug world.”
Police discovered a burning car in the Spaanse Polder, an industrial area about five kilometres away. They suspect it may be the getaway car.
Feature Image: FaceMePLS/Flickr.