A deadly shooting spree in the Dutch city of Rotterdam left two people dead and a teenage girl seriously wounded on Thursday, police said. The gunman, a 32-year-old student from Rotterdam, wore a bulletproof vest and carried a handgun as he attacked a hospital and an apartment in the city.
The first shooting occurred around 10:30 a.m. at an apartment in the Ommoord neighborhood, where the gunman shot and killed a 39-year-old woman and injured her 14-year-old daughter, Police Chief Fred Westerbeke said at a press conference. The shooter then set fire to the apartment and fled the scene.
The second shooting took place about an hour later at the Erasmus Medical Center, a university hospital in the city center, where the gunman opened fire in a classroom and killed a 46-year-old man, who was a teacher at the hospital. The shooter also started a fire in the classroom before he was arrested by police under the hospital’s helipad.
Westerbeke said the motive for the shootings was not clear, but there was no indication of terrorism or any link to the recent spate of explosions and fires in Rotterdam, which have been blamed on rival drug gangs. He said the gunman was known to police for previous minor offenses, but not for violence or radicalization.