Teenager shot dead on sports field

Seventeen-year-old Rivaldo Benjamin was shot on 7 August 2025 at the Cruyff Court on the Meernhof in Amsterdam-Zuidoost. The trigger was a stolen chain: an hour earlier a friend of Rivaldo's had been robbed of his chain near the pitch, and when photographs surfaced on social media Rivaldo went looking for the robber. In the confrontation that followed he was hit in the head and abdomen. Emergency responders tried to resuscitate him, but his injuries were too severe and he died a few hours later. A day after the shooting police arrested a sixteen-year-old suspect, who denied being the gunman. On 18 June 2026 the Amsterdam district court delivered its verdict. The offender, by then seventeen, was given two years of youth detention — the maximum juvenile sentence — plus the juvenile TBS measure (PIJ). On the basis of camera footage and other evidence the court found it proven that he shot Rivaldo dead, and held it strongly against him that he refused to explain anything. Experts concluded that he has limited capacity for empathy and a defective conscience, with a high risk of reoffending, requiring long and intensive treatment. He must also pay the bereaved family more than 50,000 euros in damages.