More people killed by violence in Amsterdam region
After two quiet years, the number of violent deaths in the Amsterdam region is on the rise. Less than halfway through this year, 11 people have been killed by violence. That is as many victims as in all of 2023 and one less than in all of 2022, Parool reports.
A worrying development is that at least four suspects of deadly violence this year are “disturbed” - a blanket term used by the Dutch authorities to cover people with mental health problems or going through a mental breakdown. Several other suspects are homeless people with various problems.
The most recent violent death happened on Monday. A 32-year-old suspect stabbed a 37-year-old Amsterdam man to death in the Jordaan district. According to Parool, the suspect has mental health problems, and the stabbing happened after the suspect refused to pay for fries at the Aggie snack bar on Tweede Goudsbloemdwarsstraat.
On January 14, 64-year-old Julia K. stabbed her 73-year-old husband in their home on Sint Janskruid in Diemen and strangled him with a belt. She is still undergoing psychological assessment.
On January 19, 90-year-old Jan van B. stabbed his 84-year-old wife and set fire to their home. The mentally unwell man called for help himself. Firefighters found the woman with multiple stab wounds in a chair, with a blanket covering her. She died in the hospital.
On March 22, 21-year-old Benfir Ç. stabbed her 80-year-old grandmother to death on James Cookstraat. She called the emergency services herself, shouting: I stabbed my grandmother, my grandmother! Please help, bring an ambulance! I killed her.” The young woman’s mental state on the day of the incident is still being assessed.
In September last year, Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema and police chief Frank Paauw raised concerns about violence involving disturbed people following a summer filled with incidents. “We have a bad feeling about the past summer. The cases involving serious violence were all related to disturbed behavior. The tragedy is also that people who have absolutely no wrong intentions can become very dangerous,” Halsema told Parool at the time.
There have also been several violent deaths involving homeless people. On March 18, a 52-year-old man was found dead in his apartment on Balthazar Floriszstraat in Amsterdam Zuid. According to the police, he had clearly been killed and had been dead for a while. The police arrested a 27-year-old suspect. Locals told Parool that the HVO-Querido homeless aid agency had placed the victim in the home a few months earlier.
On March 22, the police found a 55-year-old Spanish man dead in the Amstel river. The man had been wandering through Amsterdam and regularly slept under the Torontobrug, according to the newspaper. The police believe he had been killed, but no suspect has been arrested.
On April 2, a 55-year-old stabbed a 31-year-old at a homeless shelter on Oudezijds Voorburgwal in the city center. The victim died in the hospital. The stabbing resulted from an argument between three people staying in the shelter.
