Man holds teenage sons hostage for 8 hours in Zamboanga

ZAMBOANGA CITY — A man believed to be high on drugs hacked and wounded an aunt of his here Tuesday morning then held his two sons hostage until police finally overpowered him eight hours later.

Senior Supt. Angelito Casimiro, Zamboanga City police director, said the hostage crisis started 7 a.m. at Mangal Drive in Barangay (village) Baliwasan when an apparently distraught Nur Alvarez Sakiram hacked his aunt, Sarah Alvarez, with a machete.

“The suspect is high on drugs and there are domestic issues between him and his wife, who is abroad,” Casimiro told the Inquirer some five hours into the hostage situation.

Casimiro said that after critically wounding his aunt, Alvarez grabbed his two sons, aged 15 and 16, and used them to keep the police at bay.

“We took him by surprise,” Casimiro said after police overpowered Sakiram around 3 p.m.

His two children were rescued safely, according to Supt. Allan Nazarro, chief of the city’s central police station.

Casimiro said the police acted carefully during the hostage crisis “because we didn’t want to hurt or harm the hostage-taker and the victims, who happened to be his own children.”

“We tried to negotiate, exerted all efforts to have it peacefully resolved. We also involved his wife, his mother and other relatives. When experts told us that he could be unstable, we came to the decision to pull our final option and use the Special Action Force to put down the perpetrator,” Casimiro said.

He said the police’s SAF initially fired tear gas to bring Sakiram down before overpowering him.

Casimiro said one of the boys inhaled teargas fumes but was safe.

He said appropriate charges would be filed against Sakiram, who is now in jail.