He was asleep just after six on Wednesday evening. “I had looked a little too deep into the glass.” At that moment, Wander Botter (51) received a phone call from a comrade who said that shots had been fired in the restaurant that he has a view of from his apartment. The McDonald’s at the Ceintuurbaan, a busy highway in the north of Zwolle. “You’re terrified.”
It turned out that “a lot of cops” were drawn to the drama that had played out ten minutes earlier; two men, according to local residents respected business people from the catering industry in Zwolle, were shot dead in a packed restaurant. “I lay awake all night,” says Botter, who calls himself a poet and artist of life. He started the morning with a can of beer. “Because I was so nervous.”
Shocked residents
Botter is not the only resident of the Dieze-East district who is shocked after the double murder of the two brothers Huseyin (62) and Ali (57) Torunlar. Speak to residents and almost all of them use the word “violent”. And then immediately declare that this drama has nothing to do with a stabbing, more than a week ago, at a gas station at the same intersection. And nothing with any presumed insecurity in this neighbourhood. This is by no means a slum, they say. Wednesday’s stabbing and murder are completely unrelated to the character of the neighborhood. Dieze-Oost borders on a busy road, and also close to the highway, where the local McDonald’s is an easy meeting point – and not always for the brave. The fact that football supporters occasionally clash has nothing to do with the neighborhood itself – the stadium just happens to be in the immediate vicinity.
Since the shooting, many rumors have been circulating about the victims, especially about the youngest brother who is said to have contacts in the criminal circuit. It is only certain that one of them had a well-known eatery in the city center of Zwolle and is commemorated on social media as a journalist, and furthermore that a 32-year-old man was arrested on Wednesday evening after he had reported himself to a police station because of involvement in the drama. police station in Denver.
The deadly shooting incident is the talk of the town in Zwolle, which is usually so calm, says mayor Peter Snijders. “At schools, at the kitchen table and at the coffee machine at work. And I understand that very well. I am also very shocked by this.” Snijders speaks of “an incredibly violent event” that is “unacceptable”. “You do not expect such form of extreme violence. And certainly not in a place like that, in a full restaurant where families are eating.” People who had to experience the shooting receive support from the municipality, including at a meeting Friday afternoon.
‘Clearly this was family’
Jaap Boerema (63) also has a “sad” feeling from the drama. “It moves me.” The former painter was sitting in the living room of his apartment house opposite the restaurant on Wednesday when he suddenly saw a lot of police passing by. He filmed the minutes after the drama with his phone from the balcony of his home “with some shame” and shows the images: relatives of the men who just outside the restaurant shout “nooooooooo” and collapse in the street. “Very intense. It was clear this was family.”
Thursday morning started again surrealistically for Boerema: on one side of his flat, the police investigating McDonald’s; on the other hand, many visitors to the annual commemoration at the war memorial of five resistance men who were executed on March 31, 1945 near Zwolle.
In front of the McDonald’s entrance, a young couple is talking to the police. They come to pick up their car that they left behind after the shooting. The woman was in the restaurant at the time and, like the other guests, had quickly left. “It was very intense.”
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