Dutch crime reporter shot, badly wounded in Amsterdam street

AMSTERDAM — One of the Netherlands’ best known crime reporters was shot Tuesday evening and taken to a hospital with serious injuries, police said.

Peter R. de Vries was shot in downtown Amsterdam after making one of his regular appearances on a current affairs television show. It was an unusually brazen attack on a journalist in the Netherlands.

Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra said in Parliament he was “deeply shocked” by the attack.

“We don’t know the circumstances, but whatever the circumstances this is unimaginable and terrible news,” Hoekstra said.

The 64-year-old De Vries is known for his fearless reporting on the Netherlands’ underworld. He won an International Emmy in 2008 for a television show he made about the disappearance of U.S. teenager Natalee Holloway while she was on holiday in the Caribbean island of Aruba in 2005.