Tale of 2 hostage takers: Real knife, fake gun

Two hostage dramas unfolded hours apart in Pasay and Quezon City, one ending in the attacker’s death and the other sowing terror inside a church before it was discovered that the hostage taker merely used a toy gun.

Members of the Pasay police shot a man dead after he held a woman at knifepoint and sexually abused her inside her house on David Street, Barangay (village) 23, late Tuesday afternoon.

The hostage taker was identified as Manolo Marcaida Gonzales based on an ID he was carrying. The woman emerged wounded from her 30-minute ordeal, and police said she was seen being molested before the hostage taker was shot twice in the chest.

Chief Insp. Joey Goforth, head of the Pasay police investigation unit, said it all started when Gonzales was approached by policemen on patrol at the corner of Buendia Avenue and Harrison Street for carrying a kitchen knife.

The man ran toward San Juan Street but was stopped by village watchman Joselito Angeles. He then stabbed the watchman in his right arm and jumped over a fence of a residential compound, where he encountered the woman.

He then dragged the woman into her own house and held her captive in the kitchen.

“No one in his right mind would do such a thing,” Goforth said, noting that Gonzales was apparently high on drugs. ‘’The police tried to convince the suspect to surrender but to no avail.”

Responding policemen found a small opening on the wall and saw the woman being sexually abused. It was at this point that they decided to shoot the hostage taker, the official added.

The victim sustained two stab wounds in her chest and arms and was rushed to Manila Adventist Medical Center, where she was declared in stable condition on Wednesday.

Around 6 a.m. Wednesday in Quezon City, an “armed’’ man entered the audio room of Immaculate Conception Church on Lantana Street in Cubao and grabbed hold of an altar boy or “sakristan’’ to demand a P14,000 ransom.

But Cicero Raterta sensed that the intruder, Roel Sabaceo, was wielding a mere plastic replica of a 9-mm pistol and easily overpowered the latter  with the help of security guard Jose Yanson.

When handed over to the police station in Kamuning, Sabaceo claimed to be from Barangay Malinao Ilaya, Atimonan, Quezon province and a father of a nursing student in need of tuition money at Southern Luzon State University.

Sabaceo also claimed to be a “dismissed agent” of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, according to SPO2 Jorge Villanueva of the Quezon City Police District’s Kamuning station.

Villanueva said the suspect showed signs of being high on drugs when he also began claiming that he was a member of the so-called royal Army of the Sultanate of Sulu, which is currently making headlines for triggering a crisis in Sabah, Malaysia.