Please welcome guest blogger Erik Eggens. Erik is a Dutch reporter. He studied journalism, studied Spanish in Ecuador, and now follows national and international news. For DCC, he wrote a post about Tristan van der Vlis who went on a killing spree in Alphen aan de Rijn.
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Dutch Tristan van der Vlis, a 24 year old part time worker, killed 6 innocent people in a mall on a warm spring Saturday in a small town in the Netherlands called Alphen aan den Rijn. His motives are to this day, unknown.
Tristan van der Vlis started his killing spree immediately when he arrived at the shopping mall. Upon arrival, he opened the door of his car, shot an innocent bystander, and entered the mall near the escalator. There he killed two more people. In the end, after killing four more people who were doing their weekend shopping, Tristan killed himself with a head shot. He was found between the cash registers of a big supermarket.
During his shooting spree, he popped more than 100 rounds, killing six and wounding seventeen people. He even shot a 10-year old girl in the head. She luckily survived.
Because a massive shooting like this in the Netherlands is something we never see, the media jumped on it. His name became public shortly after the shooting.
A big Dutch newspaper pointed out his political engagement. During last year’s elections (2010), Tristan voted PVV. PVV stands for “Party for Liberation” and is a right wing extremist party in the eyes of many. That [the political affiliation] seems awkward to focus on since only one of the six people shot was not a Dutch-born citizen. That victim was a Syrian man (42) who died because of his injuries.
The more prevalent question is why Tristan van der Vlis would grab three guns (for which he had a permit) and kill. His former high school principal tells us that he was just an ordinary boy who didn’t attract much attention.
The fact that Tristan is a member of a shooting club in the Netherlands is the most peculiar fact. Tristan is also known to be suicidal and depressed. Nevertheless, he got through the tests everybody needs to pass to bear arms. Shooting clubs already fear for their existence.
In the United States, the right to bear arms has been an endless discussion in which the people that want to have arms just to protect themselves, have always won. That discussion is now going to hit the Netherlands.
The discussion about his motive starts now, just a couple of days later, while the people who died have not yet been buried.