14 houses have been shot at in Rotterdam in three weeks
Unknown perpetrators fired shots at a home on Hellevoetstraat in Rotterdam early on Wednesday morning. The police also found an explosive at the scene. This is the fourteenth house shote at in Rotterdam in less than three weeks, Rijnmond reports.
The shooting happened at around 3:40 a.m. No one got hurt. The police found the explosive, about the size of a mobile phone, at the home’s postbox, according to the broadcaster.
The fire department evacuated the home’s residents, the rest of the apartment building, and the houses across the street. The Ministry of Defense’s explosives ordnance disposal team examined the explosive with a robot and removed it. Residents were allowed to return to their homes at around 8:30 a.m.
This was the 14th time homes in Rotterdam and surroundings got shot at in 19 days, according to Rijnmond. The police told the broadcaster that some of these shootings seem to be linked.
According to the police, it’s only luck that no one has gotten hurt in these shootings. “The shooting sometimes seems to happen haphazardly. Every victim is one too many. Especially if it concerns an innocent victim,” the police said to Rijnmond.
In addition to the shootings targeting houses, there has been a series of other violent incidents in the Rotterdam region lately. Over the weekend, two people got hurt in two separate shootings in the city. A baby was stabbed to death in Charlois on Sunday. And four people, including three kids under 10, were hurt in a stabbing in Dordrecht last week.
