Suspect in teen girl's murder, woman's rape in Amsterdam arraigned today
The 22-year-old man suspected of brutally killing 17-year-old Lisa in Duivendrecht last week will be arraigned on Monday. He is also charged with raping a woman and attempting to sexually attack another woman in Amsterdam this month.
During the arraignment, the examining magistrate will review the facts of the case and decide whether to keep the man in pre-trial custody. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) may also reveal more details from the investigation.
Lisa, a 17-year-old girl from the Utrecht village of Abcoude, was found brutally killed on Holterbergweg in Duivendrecht at around 4:15 a.m. on Wednesday, August 20. She was biking home from a night out with her friends in Amsterdam when a man accosted her. She called the police. Responding officers found her lifeless body in a ditch. She had been stabbed and slashed multiple times, the police revealed in a press conference on Friday. There are as yet no indications that the man sexually attacked her.
Lisa’s route home may have taken her past the Weesperzijde in Amsterdam. There, at around 00:30 a.m. on Friday, August 15, a man raped and severely assaulted a woman who was walking along the waterfront. Another woman was attacked on the Weesperzijde five days earlier. The police initially treated this investigation as an attempted robbery, but now believe it was an attempted sex crime.
The 22-year-old suspect was arrested for the Weesperzijde rape on Friday. A short time later, the police also arrested him for Lisa’s brutal killing and the attempted attack on the other woman. The man was arrested at a shelter managed by the COA, the central agency for sheltering refugees and asylum seekers in the Netherlands. The police have released no further details about his identity.
Sources told Parool over the weekend that the man was arrested at a large asylum shelter in Amsterdam-Zuidoost. Residents of the shelter told the newspaper that he was not registered at the facility, but was found staying in someone else’s room. It is unclear whether the man had sought asylum in the Netherlands or how long he has been in the country.
