AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A lone gunman shot dead six people with an automatic weapon as he walked calmly through a Dutch shopping mall yesterday, and threatened to blow up three other shopping malls before eventually killing himself.
Panicked shoppers ran for cover or hid in shops after the gunman opened fire at random at the mall in the small town of Alphen aan den Rijn, some 46 km (29 miles) south of Amsterdam.
Dressed in camouflage trousers and a bomber jacket, the gunman began shooting in a parking lot before moving inside the mall. Ten people, were wounded, some seriously.
“I saw a woman I know walking at the other side. She wanted to enter a shop when a tall young man approached and shot her in cold blood,” Marjolein Nieuwland told the ANP news agency.
“He walked calmly and shot through the windows of the shop where I was hiding,” she said.
“I also saw a woman in her motorised wheelchair shot in the head, and at the Albert Heijn (grocery store) there was a young man. Also dead. Later I heard that was the shooter,” she said.
Officials named the gunman as Tristan van der Vlis, 24, a local man who lived in the town with his father.
Police said gunshots were still ringing out when they arrived at the scene in response to an emergency call shortly after midday.
