Three killed, five injured in Netherlands shooting
By
Will Morrow
19 March 2019
Dutch officials announced at 6:30 p.m. last night that police had arrested 37-year-old Gökmen Tanis, the principal suspect in a shooting yesterday morning in the city of Utrecht that left three people dead and another five injured.
At the time of writing, little is known about either the event itself or the motivations of the shooter. The shooting occurred on a tram in Utrecht at approximately 10:45 a.m. Witness statements indicate that a single male shooter was targeting a specific woman, rather than firing indiscriminately at all nearby passengers.
A 21-year-old witness, Niels, who was on the tram at the time, told De Gelderlader that the perpetrator “focused on a particular person,” and then “aimed at the people who tried to help that woman.” He said that he saw a woman crawl out of the tram, and as people tried to help her, a gunman “went round behind her and began firing at them.”
Another witness told Dutch public broadcaster NOS that he helped an injured woman after the tram had stopped. “I looked behind me and saw someone lying there behind the tram. People got out of their cars … and they started to lift her up. I helped to pull her out and then I saw a gunman run towards us, with his gun raised,” he said. “I heard people yell: Shooter! Shooter! And I started to run.” Of the five people injured, three are reported to be in critical condition.
The Turkish state-owned news agency Anadolu reported that the shooter was targeting “a relative in a tram due to a family dispute,” citing unnamed relatives. Tanis is reportedly of Turkish origin.
NOS reported that acquaintances told the media that there was a “family issue,” and that Tanis had serious…