27/09/07
Pix: A team of plain-cloth anti-crime police carry away the body of the hostage taker ‘Jimmy’.
By Roger J. Duyong
SARAWAK/Malaysia: The land of the hornbill, the state Sarawak was gripped with a 16-hour hostage drama, the first ever recorded event in the tropical paradise on the northern part of Borneo Island.
The heart-wrenching drama has had a six-year old boy as hostage, after the suspect, known as ‘Jimmy’ 49, grabbed him to the first floor of the house Jimmy and family stay in, following a quarrel with his wife, in an industrial town of Bintulu.
Local policemen, reportedly failed to convince the deranged man to free the terrified hostage boy who was cruelly tortured by the suspect. The mad man, said to be his own uncle, had cut three of the boy’s fingers one by one and slip them through a small opening below the door, for the police to see.
Even the pleas from the suspect’s teenage children failed to change the man’s man.
Earlier on, after breaking a quarrel with his wife, following what was alleged as an affair, the suspect who is a Malaysian born Filipino stabbed his wife with a kitchen knife. The wife ran down floor, screaming for help as a knife was stuck on her back. People from the same house managed to stop him from hurting her more and sent her to the hospital. The woman suffered multiple wounds on the back after being stabbed several times.
It was at the time of chaos and confusion the suspect carried the young boy for human shield. He had demanded to see the wife and the alleged ‘boy friend’ of the wife. He had also reportedly demanded drugs to be sent to him. If his demands were not met he would kill the boy. To show that he meant business, he cut the boy’s finger one each at a time.
Describing as a drug addict, the chief of Police of Bintulu said it was impossible to meet the man’s demand as his wife was already in the hospital Intensive Care Unit and the ‘boy friend’ could not be traced.
When the police found out that there was now way out they decided to storm the hostage room. And by 4.30am on the morning of Wednesday, September 26 a group anti-crime police storm the room, shot the man in the chest and killed him immediately on the spot. Police said that the mad suspect was holding the terrified boy and about to slit the boy’s throat.
It ended with great relief from the people of Sarawak, one of Malaysia’s thirteen states, after the hostage taker was eventually shot dead.
The event was considered by many people in restive and peaceful Sarawak as very uncommon and unheard of before. The story was on the front pages of all the local newspapers the past two days.
Meanwhile, the parents of victim were there during the episode praying, agonizing and crying over the boy’s terrible heart-rending cries for help. The father, according to the newspapers was married to the sister of the suspect’s wife and it was due to his kindness that he allowed the family to stay in his house. He had also once, employed the suspect as his driver and thus has known the man for many years.