Man who shot ex-girlfriend and killed her mother swallows razor blade ahead of appeal

The man convicted in a fatal 2023 shooting at a shopping center in Zwijndrecht did not appear at his appeal hearing Monday after reportedly swallowing a razor blade and being taken to a hospital, prosecutors said.

Minh Nghia V., 52, was due to appear before the appeals court in The Hague in a case involving a January 2023 shooting in the parking lot of shopping center Walburg in Zwijndrecht. Prosecutors say V. shot his ex-girlfriend Anneke twice in the back and then shot her mother, Michel, in the chest when she tried to help her daughter.

The 66-year-old woman died shortly afterward, while Anneke survived but was left permanently disabled. Authorities said V. sent a message to Anneke about an hour before the shooting that read, “An, until death do us part.”

According to RTL, the Public Prosecution Service said V. swallowed a razor blade shortly before Monday’s hearing and was transported to a hospital. Authorities gave no further details about his medical condition.

The court had ordered V. to be present, but the hearing continued in his absence after judges determined that all parties wanted the case to proceed. V.’s attorney said Monday morning he was unaware that his client had swallowed a razor blade.

“For the surviving relatives, this process weighs enormously heavily,” the prosecutor-general said in court. “They want nothing more than the completion of this case.”

In recent weeks, V. had gone on a hunger strike in protest over his detention conditions at the Penitentiaire Inrichting Sittard, where he is held in a high-security unit known as the afdeling voor intensief toezicht, or AIT. V. has described the regime there as “inhumane conditions.” Last week he lost a civil lawsuit against the Dutch state seeking a transfer from the intensive monitoring unit.

Relatives previously described the killing as senseless violence that devastated their family. “Our innocent and defenseless mother, Michel, was cowardly shot dead by Anneke’s ex-boyfriend,” they said in a statement at the time.

V. fled after the shooting and remained on the run for nearly five weeks. Police arrested him in February 2023 on the Kethelbrug in Schiedam after receiving a tip “from an observant citizen.” He was alone in a car when officers took him into custody, police said. The suspect confessed right after the arrest.

Investigators believed he had been hiding in the Rotterdam area and may have received help from others during the manhunt. Authorities had offered a 30,000-euro reward for information leading to his arrest.

The district court later convicted V. and sentenced him to 30 years in prison after prosecutors had sought life imprisonment.

Judges ruled the attack constituted a clear attempted femicide. Prosecutors said V. carried out the shooting because he could not accept that his partner had ended their relationship, although he denied during trial that she had broken up with him and became angry when judges questioned him about it.

The case also raised questions about how police handled earlier threats. In the two weeks before the shooting, Anneke twice tried to report threats from V. at a police station, but the reports were not recorded despite his extensive criminal history.

Her lawyer, Sébas Diekstra, later said records showed V. had “111 registrations of facts or criminal offenses,” many involving violence, and that he was flagged in police systems as “firearm dangerous.” “Then alarm bells should ring at the police, right?” Diekstra said. “But they did not record the report. And the rest is history.”