Police have arrested a man in connection with the deaths of two people on Tuesday morning in the village of Weiteveen in Drenthe, near the border with Germany.

Local broadcaster RTV Drenthe said one of the victims was found in a car, the other in a house in the village.

Police were alerted at 8:45 am when they received a report of a violent altercation at the Bargerweg in Weiteveen. When the police arrived, they discovered shots had been fired. A subsequent search uncovered the body of the victims, a Polish man aged 50 and a Dutch woman aged 44, who, locals said, are said to be a couple.

The suspect, a 50-year-old man from Klazienaveen was arrested at the spot.

According to RTV Drenthe, the incident may have been the culmination of a long-running conflict about the sale and maintenance of a house sold to the couple.

Unverified footage of the man admitting to the crime are circulating on the internet. In it the man talks of having been harrassed by the couple for a year, the AD reported.

In another video, his wife said she had tried to stop her husband but that he was “beside himself”.

A real estate agent involved in the sale said he had tried to mediate in the conflict which he said concerned structural failings to the house. “It led to some pretty intense scenes but in all my 25 years in real estate I have never experienced anything like this,” he told the paper.