Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Philippine mall’s ex-guard ends standoff
MANILA, Philippines — A recently dismissed security guard freed dozens of hostages and was subdued by police after walking out of a shopping mall in the Philippine capital on Monday, ending a daylong hostage crisis in an upscale commercial district near the police and military headquarters, officials said.
The former guard at the Greenhills shopping center, identified by police as Archie Paray, left the mall in San Juan City in metropolitan Manila with the remaining hostages, who were then secured by police. Several others had managed to escape earlier, police said.
“Everyone is in shock, very traumatized. We’ll have to give them time to recover,” said San Juan Mayor Francis Zamora, who ordered an investigation, including into how the suspect was able to enter the mall with a pistol and grenades. Instead of being immediately arrested, the suspect was allowed to speak for several minutes to journalists and authorities to describe his grievances against his former bosses, whom he accused of corruption and abuse, before police approached and subdued him.
Zamora said the suspect had a pistol with him when he walked down from a second-floor administrative office where he had held dozens of hostages, many of them mall employees. There were between 60 to 70 hostages and people who were trapped in the mall by the standoff, Zamora said.
The gunman shot and wounded a security officer at the V-Mall, part of the Greenhills complex, Zamora said. The mall officer was in stable condition at a nearby hospital.