# Dutch Police Officer Killed On Traffic Stop



## Inspector (Nov 13, 2006)

A police woman has been shot dead in Amstelveen, just south of the Dutch capital Amsterdam. The 28-year-old police officer was on her way to the police station to do a night shift, when she called the radio room. 

A BMW car had caught her attention because of erratic driving. It turned out that the driver of the vehicle had been involved in an violent incident earlier in the evening. It is unclear what happened next, but later police were called to a shooting incident in a residential neighbourhood. The police woman was found seriously injured. She died later in hospital. A 49-year-old suspect has been arrested.

Police officers are seldom killed on duty in the Netherlands. The last time it happened was in 2004 when a sergeant in Enschede was shot dead when he tried to frisk a German suspected of drug dealing.

UPDATE:

The police officer shot dead in Amstelveen on Wednesday night has been identified as 28-year-old Gabriëlle Cevat, news agency ANP said on Thursday. A 49-year-old man from Amsterdam has been arrested in connection with the shooting.
Amsterdam police chief Bernard Welten said her station was extremely shocked by the death and sent his condolences to friends and family. Her partner is also a police officer. 
According to ANP, the Cevat was in plain clothes and driving to a police station in Amsterdam Noord for her night shift when she noticed a BMW driving erratically. She alerted her colleagues and drove after the car. 
The car stopped in the Piet de Winterlaan in Amstelveen. The police officer got out and identified herself to the driver who shot her once in her upper body. He fled into a nearby house. The three teenagers who were home escaped through a window. Cevat died later in hospital.
The suspect was involved in another incident in Amstelveen earlier in the evening during which shots were fired at a door, ANP reports. The man is reportedly known to the police and has a criminal record for sex and violent crimes.
The shooting is the sixth death of a police officer in active service since 1977 and the first since 2004.


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