Rotterdam Shootings

A Dutch man has opened fire at the crowded Café Laurenshof in Rotterdam, Netherlands, killing one person and injuring three others, on Saturday, April 11, 2009.

Dutch police said bystanders wrestled the gunman to the ground and held him until officers arrived.

A police spokesman said the gunman was a 44-year-old Rotterdam resident, but gave no further details.

He said the motive for the early morning shooting was unclear, but may have begun with a quarrel in the cafe, where a talent contest was under way.

The shooting took place at 0100 local time (2300 GMT) on April 11, 2009, according to Dutch police.

One person was wounded inside the cafe and three people were hit on the street, one fatally.

Police said the fatality was a 46-year-old man from Rotterdam but gave no further details. The other victims suffered gunshot wounds in the lower body.

The suspect was described by witnesses as wearing a cap and having behaved erratically and picking fights with people earlier that evening.

One witness, identified only as "Madelon'. "He just shot like a wild man,' she said. "At first I thought it was a fake pistol, but then I saw fire spewing from the barrel as he was firing it.'

Some patrons barricaded themselves inside the toilets, others fled from the door in a panic. One man, identified as "Peter", remained with his friend who'd been shot in the back and had collapsed on the floor, while the man kept on shooting, writes the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper in Rotterdam.

Ambulance personnel still tried to reanimate him, but he died in the doorway. A third victim -- a man in a wheelchair -- was hit in a leg. The fourth victim suffers an injury to a hand.

The wounded are in stable condition in hospital.

The Café Laurenshof is a small but popular bar with live music near a shopping mall on Poolster Square, noted the Associated Press, in the east side of the port city of Rotterdam. A talent contest was under way at the time of the shooting.

The Café Laurenshof, which the English media sources are saying is located "near a shopping mall on Poolster Square," is actually, in Dutch, has an address at the Mall Alexandrium, Poolsterplein.

Besides "Alexandrium" being extremely suggestive, "Poolster Square" is, apparently, an incomplete translation of "Poosterplein."

Also, for the record, "Laurenshof" is Dutch for "Laurens Court."

April 11th is the second anniversary of the date in 2007, when two bombs exploded in the Algerian capital of Algiers, killing 33 people and wounding a further 222 others.

Sources include the BBC, CBC, AP, Algemeen Dagblad, Digital Journal, and other media.
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