HOOGEZAND - A large white tent hides the house in the Annie M.G. Schmidthof in Hoogezand from view. The investigation by the technical police into the shooting Sunday night, which it now appears took the life of Amsterdam rapper "Rel," is running at full speed. Neighbors of what is popularly called the banana flat can only guess at what exactly happened behind the front door of number 9. A girl who lives on the second floor heard three gunshots during the night. "Three loud bangs." The 26-year-old resident is still in custody. He says he was robbed by three or four men. Yesterday it emerged that one of them was so badly wounded that he died. "A very friendly man," Kornelis Boer says of his neighbor, the detained resident. "I don't know him otherwise, but he always greets kindly." Boer was awakened Sunday night by a lot of noise. "There was very loud shouting." Shots he did not hear. The arrested man, who has a dark complexion, has not lived in the apartment building long, according to local residents. He lives there with a white girlfriend. There is actually never any nuisance. "He gets a lot of friends over, but that doesn't bother us," said Boer, who reacts with shock when he hears that there has been a death. "That happens next door. That does shock you. Luckily I'm pretty level-headed," he says just before stepping into his house. In the house hidden behind the tent on the first floor, the police have been working all day. There have been several shootings in the rap world in Amsterdam over the past year. In September, 19-year-old rapper Ishmael Gumbs was shot to death in Amsterdam-Zuidoost where the rapper 'Rel' is also from. The month before, rapper Lexxus was seriously injured in a shooting at a festival in the capital. Many rappers glorify gangster violence from the US. Amsterdam Chief of Police Welten recently expressed concern that many of these guys walk around with a gun. This is one of the messages Amsterdam rapper Rotjoch wrote on Twitter about the murder of his friend Rel:
My little brother,half son, 1 of my best friends was murdered last night and I am devastated! I love you REL!!! Forever!!! I don't know anymore man.
