Man dies after stabbing and perpetrator shot dead by police

During the night of Thursday 25 to Friday 26 January 2018, a fatal incident took place inside an apartment on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal in the centre of Amsterdam, leaving two German men dead. According to reports, the apartment had been rented out to tourists through Airbnb or a similar rental platform, while the owners were said to be staying in Asia at the time. Around midnight, police received a report from local residents about a fight in an upstairs apartment. When officers entered the home, they encountered a highly violent situation. Inside the apartment, they found a 56-year-old German man with serious stab wounds. A 25-year-old German man was also present and was regarded by police as the likely perpetrator of the stabbing. During the police intervention, a struggle occurred, after which officers shot the 25-year-old man. Both men were resuscitated inside the apartment. The 25-year-old man died at the scene from the police shooting. The 56-year-old victim was taken to hospital with severe injuries and underwent surgery that night, but he died several days later from his wounds. According to police, both men knew each other and both had German nationality. The exact cause of the argument has not become clear from public reporting. Neighbours later described blood in the hallway, in the lift and near doors in the building, suggesting that the violence had taken place inside the apartment and that the stabbed victim may have tried to escape. Because the 25-year-old man was shot dead by police, the Rijksrecherche, the Dutch National Criminal Investigation Department, opened an investigation into the police use of force, as is standard in cases involving fatal police shootings. There was therefore no ordinary criminal trial against the suspected perpetrator, because he had died during the incident. As far as publicly known, the names of the two German men were not released and no later criminal conviction followed. The case can therefore be described as a fatal stabbing inside a tourist-rented apartment, followed by a fatal police shooting of the suspected attacker.