Attempted Regicide in the Netherlands

In an apparent attempt at vehicular homicide directed at the Dutch Royal family, four people were killed today when a man drove a car at high speed through the crowd at a Queen’s Day celebration in the city of Apeldoorn.

Update: CNN reports that one of the injured has died, bringing the death total to five (hat tip Paul Green).

According to a report from Radio Netherlands:

Tragedy unfolds in Apeldoorn

Celebrations of Queen’s Day in the Dutch city of Apeldoorn took a tragic turn around midday on Thursday. Four people were killed and 13 injured when a car ploughed through a crowd of spectators watching the Queen’s Day parade.


The queen may have escaped an attack. The car broke through the barriers, hitting people and crashing into a monumental column as the open-topped coach carrying the Royal Family passed.

The public prosecutor confirmed at a press conference that the driver was acting intentionally, but that there is no terrorist connection. He is reported to have made two earlier attempts to cross safety barriers, driving at a speed of at least 80 kms/hr. The driver was injured in the crash and had to be cut from his vehicle, after which he was arrested and taken away for interrogation. At present no details have been released about the driver except that he is a 38-year old Dutch national.

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Police are meticulously searching the car wreck, assisted by the national demining squad and in the presence of the National Anti-terror Co-ordinator.

The Royal Family, waving to the crowd from their open-topped bus, witnessed the incident. Immediately afterwards the vehicle was driven to Het Loo palace, accompanied by security guards. The Government Information Service has announced the queen and her family are deeply shocked by the events.

There was some early speculation that the attack may have been an instance of “Sudden Jihad Syndrome”, but that seems unlikely now, based on the following summary by our Flemish correspondent VH of an article in Elsevier:

Attack on members of the royal family

The man who today drove his car in the crowd today (Queen’s day) and came to a halt a few meters from the bus with the royal family acted intentionally. He is a 38-year-old white man. He was in possession of a time schedule for the day’s program.

No explosives have been found.

The man is also suspected of murder or manslaughter: four spectators have died.

The offender is seriously injured and is undergoing surgery. He has still not been officially interrogated. The suspect is not known to the police. According to the weblog GeenStijl, the offender is the 38-year-old KR Tates from Huissen (near Arnhem).

It is clear that the military earlier in the day had contact with the man. What exactly happened then is not known.

15 thoughts on “Attempted Regicide in the Netherlands

  1. Yeah. It is looking like this guy was some lone nutjob. Expect the left to use this as further proof that angry white guys are much more dangerous then your average peace loving Muslim.

  2. “At present no details have been released about the driver except that he is a 38-year old Dutch national.”

    It is perfectly rational to assume that he is a Muslim, as we await further information from a Western government & media who have been known to be prone to sweep Islamic details under the rug before in similar cases.

    The rational modus operandi for the West should be: Muslims are guilty until proven innocent.

    1) This is not a normal crime.

    2) There have been vehicular homicides (and attempted vehicular homicides count as such) before with Muslims involved, at least two in the USA (North Carolina, San Francisco).

    3) Muslims have demonstrated a willingness and zeal to engage in “Sudden Jihad Syndrome” (or its close relative, “Voluntary Jihad Syndrome”) many times before.

    Any given Western society has the right to intelligently presume that unusual homicides like this are caused by Muslims, and to profile accordingly. This does not mean the law enforcement profilers should ignore data that indicates otherwise. It just means that, given the prevailing sociopolitical culture that heavily prejudices the opposite bias, and given the risks of the dangers we face from Muslims, we should expect those whose job it is to protect us to err on the side of caution, and of reason.

    Okay, I return your stations back to Reality, where likely a few hundred thousands of us will have to be mass-murdered by Muslims over the next 50 years before our West wakes up from its ridiculous PC MC coma.

  3. Pim Fortuyn was killed by a Dutch national, if I’m not mistaken, some left wing animal activist who objected to the gay politician’s anti-immigration stance.

    Europe is full of lefty dhimmis now who are not just enabling Muslims but actually conducting their jihad for them in our law courts and there’s plenty of them mentally imbalanced enough to erupt into sudden physical jihad too as Fortuyn’s fate demonstrates.

  4. The thing that stuck in my mind was the establishment’s immediate disclaimer – that “…this was not linked to terrorism.” Why say it if it wasn’t? And if it wasn’t what does the disclaimer say about the establishment and what it thinks about its own population (the Dutch part of it)? Seems to me that if this is the case the establishment is beginning to feel the (Dutch) population’s disquiet about the Muslims(terrorists) in its midst.

  5. Mark: “State-Attorney Wim de Bruin sais that Karst Tates died 2:58hrs local time in the hospital.”

    I can see the crash killing pedestrians but it didn’t seem violent enough to have resulted in the driver’s death. Or am I wearing my conspiracy head this evening? I have after all just got home from work!

  6. He also ran into a statue, or column, or some such and suffered massive head injuries. Judging from the pictures he was probably already dead in all but name by the time they cut him out of the car.

  7. “He also ran into a statue, or column, or some such and suffered massive head injuries.” Convenient though… He didn’t appear to be travelling that fast.

  8. Seven people are dead now, including Kars R. Tates himself, so say the main stream media in the Netherlands. As usual in the Netherlands 30-40yr old aboriginal suspects are considered by the police agents as lonely isolated genuine dutch men. The autopsy report about his dead corps should prove that he was (not) poisened to death by lethal injection.

  9. They had to make sure the car was not loaded with bombs before removing the roof to get at the driver. No sense losing more innocent lives in the form of helping professionals like police and medics. If the caution and delay contributed to the killer’s death, so be it. He got what he wanted.

    You take away easy access to guns from any population, the wingnuts will find another way to kill. Should there now be car control laws? People are always justifying gun control laws by saying no one objects to the state licensing cars so…

    What do you know. All the licensing in the world of every object in the world will not stop this kind of one in a million behavior.

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