Man with a knife shot dead by police on Noorddammerweg in De Kwakel

On Thursday morning, 17 March 2016, a man armed with a knife was shot dead by police on Noorddammerweg in De Kwakel, near Uithoorn. Shortly after 05:00, officers went to a home after receiving a report of a fight. At the scene, they found a man with a knife in the street. According to police, the man came towards the officers with the knife, after which one officer fired. The man was seriously wounded. Emergency workers tried to resuscitate him, but he died at the scene from his injuries. Police did not publicly release his name. Dutch local reporting later stated that he was probably a Polish horticultural worker employed in the greenhouses around Uithoorn and De Kwakel. The incident was also described as following a fight in a so-called “Polish men’s house”, a residence where several Polish migrant workers were staying. Polish-language reporting repeated that information and wrote that the man was probably Polish. One Polish regional reference identified him as 22-year-old Maciej from the area around Giżycko, but a full name has not been reliably confirmed in public sources. As is standard in cases involving fatal police use of force, the Rijksrecherche opened an investigation into the officer’s shooting. As far as publicly available information shows, no later clear conclusion from that investigation or prosecution decision has been published. The case can therefore be described as a fatal police shooting after a report of a fight, in which a man believed to be a Polish migrant worker, possibly a 22-year-old named Maciej, was shot dead by an officer while armed with a knife on Noorddammerweg in De Kwakel.