MANILA, Philippines?A wet towel left lying on the floor led to the downfall on Monday of one of the country?s most wanted fugitives.

Convinced on seeing the black towel that their quarry was just around, agents of the National Bureau of Investigation peered into a stockroom and, with the beam of a flashlight, saw a pile of mannequins?and a tattooed arm.

?Come out of there, Jason Ivler. We are from the NBI,? NBI officer Angelito Magno shouted. But the man acted ?like Rambo? and answered him with bursts of gunfire.

Two months after he went into hiding, the 27-year-old Ivler?an American charged with murder for the killing of a motorist?was captured by his hunters while hiding in his mother?s home at Blue Ridge A Subdivision in Quezon City.

Ivler suffered two gunshot wounds in the shoot-out and was declared by doctors to be in ?guarded? condition after a three-hour operation. Two NBI agents were also wounded.

Ivler?s Filipino mother, Marlene Aguilar, was detained and later charged by the NBI with obstruction of justice at an inquest Monday night.

Palace Undersecretary Renato Ebarle Sr., father of the motorist Ivler is accused of killing last November, said in effect that he hoped his son?s alleged killer would rot in jail.

About 50 NBI agents took part in the raid, which followed a tip from an informant that Ivler?a nephew of folk singer Freddie Aguilar?might be hiding in the house.

Mother becomes hysterical

Details of the shoot-out were recounted to the Inquirer by agents of the NBI Special Action Unit (SAU) and the NBI Intelligence Services, who carried out the raid on a normally peaceful neighborhood.

Minutes before the shoot-out, which occurred at around 6:30 a.m. at Hillside Drive in Blue Ridge, the raiders found the crumpled black towel in Ivler?s supposedly unused room on the second floor of the house, according to the agents? accounts.

Suspicious, they checked the bathroom across the room and saw signs it had just been used.

It was at that point that Aguilar, the mother, became hysterical and ordered the raiders out, the agents said.

Tattooed arm

NBI-SAU chief Magno told the Inquirer that while Aguilar was shepherding them off to the ground floor from Ivler?s room, he noticed a small storage room at the landing of the stairs.

?I asked her if I could see what was inside the stockroom, and she told me, ?There?s nothing there to see.? She seemed to be in a hurry to get us out of her son?s room,? Magno said.

Insistent, Magno said he peeked into the dark stockroom and, using a flashlight, saw mannequins and boxes stored inside. He said he also saw ?a tattooed arm.?

?I knew he was there,? Magno said.

?He acted like Rambo?

Backing away from the door, Magno said he drew his gun and, in Filipino, shouted at the man to come out. He said Ivler answered with volleys of gunfire through the closed door.

?He acted like Rambo when he saw our operatives,? NBI Deputy Director for Intelligence Ruel Lasala said, referring to the Hollywood character portrayed by Sylvester Stallone.

Magno was grazed by a bullet in the right thigh as he and the other agents ducked for cover.

He said Ivler, clad in a white shirt and shorts and a bandolier of ammunition, was armed with an M-16 Armalite rifle and firing at bursts of three bullets each burst. He also had a .45 cal. pistol at his side.

NBI agent Anna Labao was hit in the chest by fragments of a bullet.

Only death is certain

An agent who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media said: ?He fell down in front of us and we subdued him. I asked him, ?Why did you have to fight us?? He said, ?I want to die.? He kept on shouting, ?Kill me.??

?If the bullet had not hit the sights of my M-16 rifle, I would have been killed,? the agent said, showing his rifle with its sights partially torn off, apparently by a bullet.

NBI agent Danilo Mayani later showed reporters a video of Ivler lying on his hospital bed, with tattoos all over his right arm and a tattoo of a sun on his neck with the words ?Handang Mamatay? (Ready to Die).

Tattooed on Ivler?s back were the words ?Life is not certain. Death is,? another NBI official said.

Video footages of the shoot-out, showing agents scrambling around the house with drawn guns amid screams and sounds of gunfire, gripped millions of televiewers when shown on newscasts Monday night.

?Ivler is not here?

The agent who asked not to be identified said Aguilar ?tried to delay? the NBI agents when they arrived to search the house.

?She offered us coffee and was cooperative at first and told us repeatedly that Ivler was not there,? he said.

But later, ?when she was asked about the wet towel, she went into hysterics and kept shouting at us, ?Get out of my house,?? the agent said.

Magno said the NBI carried out the raid based on a ?high percentage of belief? that Ivler was in the house. He said that even after the shoot-out, Aguilar insisted, ?I didn?t know he was here.?

Magno described Marlene as calm when they arrived at the house.

?We were about to use ladders to scale the walls of the compound but Marlene stopped us. She said it would be better for us to come in because she was going to cooperate, anyway,? Magno said.

He said only four agents, including him, were allowed to roam the house. The rest were asked by Aguilar to stay outside, he said.

?We soon found out why,? Magno said.

Possible charges

Aguilar was hauled off to the NBI headquarters in Manila. Two house helpers, whose names were withheld, were invited for questioning.

NBI Director Nestor Mantaring said Ivler would be charged with assault on agents of a person in authority, resisting arrest and possibly illegal possession of firearms if it was found his guns were not licensed.

Magno said a check with the Firearms and Explosives Division showed ?there was no gun licensed to Ivler.?

Monday?s operation followed two failed raids on the house. The two previous raids were carried out last year.

Lasala said the NBI received information two weeks ago that Ivler was possibly hiding in his mother?s house.

?We suspect he has been there since December... and that he spent the holidays there,? Lasala said.

Blood loss

The NBI official declined to reveal the source of the information but said they had been conducting surveillance on the house for two weeks.

Doctors at Quirino Memorial Medical Center said surgeons removed Ivler?s spleen and part of his intestines during an operation.

Dr. Fernando Lopez, chief surgeon, said Ivler lost 600 cc of blood as a result of his two gunshot wounds.

Two inches of Ivler?s large intestines were removed during the surgery, doctors said.

The road rage suspect was seen handcuffed to his bed at the surgical intensive care unit.

Late Monday afternoon, Lopez said Ivler?s condition was ?still guarded, we can?t say yet that he is stable.?

Ivler is under sedation but responds to verbal communication, Lopez said.

He said the handcuffs on Ivler were to restrain him from pulling out the tubes attached to him.

?The wound should be healing in seven to 10 days but complete recovery of his functions should take 30 to 40 days,? Lopez said.

Earlier, Lopez said: ?He has a pretty good chance of surviving.?

Ivler has been wanted since November 2009 for the shooting of Renato Ebarle Jr., son of Undersecretary Ebarle.

Ivler is Aguilar?s son from a previous marriage to an American national. She is now married to Briton Stephen Pollard, a consultant at the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Aguilar earlier told authorities her son had already left for Hawaii.

Some of Aguilar?s neighbors said they did not hear any commotion in their neighborhood at the time of the raid.

But a woman tending to a sari-sari store across the street said she heard muffled gunshots at the time but that residents did not go out of their homes.