RUG staff member photographed the arrest
Fareeba witnessed the shooting of the Pathé murder suspect
Breakfast was on the table, the coffee was still hot. Fareeba Sheedfar and her husband Matthijs Platje were preparing for a lazy Sunday morning in their apartment at the Hoendiep when they suddenly heard shouting outside. ‘Of course, we hear people shouting on the street more often, but that’s drunk people, late at night. This was different and really, really loud.’
Fareeba and her husband immediately raced to the window of their Hoendiep apartment to see what was happening. They were just in time to see a man in a black t-shirt standing near the petrol station’s car park. He was pointing his gun at another guy, maybe one or two metres away from him. ‘I mean close. Really close’, Fareeba said, while demonstrating both the distance and the posture of the man, gun pointing down.
She heard shots and then the second man started screaming.
Ergün S.
A year ago, when she was camping with her husband in France, she had heard gunshots, too. Back then she mistook them for firecrackers, only to find out later that some police officers had been shot close to where she was. Now, she knew the bangs for what they were.
Fareeba grabbed her phone as her husband went for his SLR camera. They glued themselves to the window, their eyes on the scene.
They didn’t know exactly what was happening. Fareeba had heard of the murders in the Pathé cinema. On Saturday morning, the bodies of two cleaners had been found there. Ergün S. had been captured by CCTV cameras exiting the cinema.
On Saturday night, when she was out with her husband during the Nacht van de Nacht, he had warned her to stay close, because a murderer was out there. ‘And you never know!’ As she watched the police peeling off the suspect’s clothes, it dawned on her that this had to be Ergün S.
After S. had been shot, the police officer moved in quickly. He kicked something away that made a sound like metal. ‘I think it was a knife.’ Another unmarked police car appeared in less than thirty seconds. A second policeman jumped out and started helping the wounded man. ‘There was so much blood’, Fareeba says. ‘Their hands were all bloody and it was flowing out onto the street.’
As more unmarked police cars appeared, blocking the streets, S. stopped screaming. ‘We were like: is he dead? But then we saw him put his hand up.’
Lots of blood
As the drama unfolded, she started to share pictures on Twitter. She and her husband were supposed to visit friends in Annen, but they called to say they wouldn’t be able to make it. ‘We told them we felt safer staying at home. Too much was happening.’
The police didn’t start wrapping up the scene until approximately two in the afternoon. After the suspect had been taken to hospital, a forensic crew took photos and endless samples. At last, the street was cleaned up. ‘When I came there this morning, all the blood was gone.’
She didn’t feel shaken, she says, and had a really good night’s sleep. Still, her colleagues were surprised to see her at work this morning. ‘They had expected me to take the day off’, she says. She didn’t need to, though. ‘I think the guy who shot this man might need to recover.’