The goldsmith couple Gelderman and Sohier were also sitting up in bed last night when they heard a bang. Half an hour later it turned out that their own business was the target of a thud.
“I’ve been awake since half past three and completely hyper,” says owner Natasja Gelderman in her and her husband’s studio. “It’s already very busy, everything is against me and last night I thought: now I’m going to collapse. But that won’t happen, maybe it will come, but now I just want to clean up that mess.”
Gelderman and Sohier live near their studio on the Hogeweg in Amsterdam. When they received a call from the emergency center and rushed to their store, the police had already closed the street. Security footage shows how two men attach an explosive, according to the police a fireworks bomb, to the shop window.
“Then the whole thing explodes, the whole windshield comes out. That guy stumbled in, looked around the store and hopped out again. And the whole store is full of glass, dust and misery. Everything is broken,” says Gelderman.
The robbers had not done their homework properly, because valuables were not available in the display case. “We remove a lot, so there was nothing,” sighs the Amsterdam native.
Support from the neighbourhood
So just before the holidays and after two corona years This new setback is a slap in the face for entrepreneurs. apps and messages of support from the neighborhood are pouring in. “I can cry, it’s really terrible. You don’t do this, do you?”, says an emotional local resident who brings flowers. The police is still looking for witnesses.