Half an hour of terror on the set, the hostages communicate: “I was on my knees and I was afraid of being shot” | EUROtoday

The final hour of the newscast on the TC Televisión channel had begun. The presenters Jorge Rendón and Vanessa Filella had been within the studio when the pictures had been heard just a few meters from the reception of the nationwide channel constructing in Guayaquil. The screams and blows got here down the hallway in the direction of the research. It was round 2:15 p.m. on Tuesday.

Ecuador had a day of terror with a number of simultaneous assaults with bombs, burning automobiles, shootings and murders in several cities of the nation. In 5 prisons, 125 jail guides and 15 individuals from the executive space are nonetheless kidnapped by the prisoners. On social networks, movies circulated wherein a few of them had been allegedly murdered whereas the Government remained silent. There was loads to report on a violent day.

“When I heard the shots, all of us who were in the newsroom ran to find a place to hide,” says Alina Manrique, editor-in-chief, who ran to a toilet. “Everyone was looking for a place to hide, the archive, the bathrooms, they went up to other floors.” Two different companions hid together with her from the place they wrote to ask for assist.

“Then we were silent… a lot of silent,” explains Alina, “until we heard them approach us and they started banging on the door with insults and threats that they were going to kill us and we had no choice but to leave with our hands up.” They beat them, tore a sequence from her neck and threw them to the ground within the studio from the place an unprecedented second was being broadcast. About twenty hooded males, with masks, some with their pants beneath their hips, with weapons and dynamites took over the TC Television studio in the course of the newscast.

Ten different hostages had been with the editor-in-chief. The terrorists requested for microphones and the sound engineer did what they requested, everybody tried to stay calm within the midst of the phobia of figuring out that they had been kidnapped by twenty younger individuals who moved from one aspect to the opposite, dragged individuals, pointed at them. head, they kicked them on the ground and shot them within the air. One of these bullets ricocheted off the leg of one of many cameramen who stays hospitalized.

Journalist Stalin Baquerizo ran to a different rest room to cover with a companion. “They shouted ‘we are the active Tiguerones’ while I heard the screams of my companions, the shots, the banging on the doors, the glass breaking on the floor,” the journalist narrates in regards to the minutes of panic he skilled whereas making an attempt to not his respiratory could possibly be heard. The kidnappers requested about him, who is among the seen faces of the information program, and once they had been advised that he was not there, the criminals, frantic, picked up journalist José Luis Calderón from the ground, positioned a dynamite in his jacket pocket and They had been compelled to provide a message to the Police: to not enter the canal, to go away.

Almost thirty minutes handed till helicopters and police pictures had been heard. The criminals tried to flee by taking among the individuals they’d held on the ground to make use of them as a human protect. Among them, Alina. “We were six hostages and they took us looking for a way out, until we arrived at another smaller studio, where they made us record videos asking the Police not to shoot and to leave.”

When the uniformed officers entered, the hostages had been left within the center. “I was afraid of dying from a shot from the police or from one of these guys who were very nervous,” till they handed over the weapons. “I was on my knees and when a police officer helped me get up, I knew I had survived…” says Alina, who describes the second as a traumatic expertise: “At this moment it is very easy to kill journalists in Ecuador, too easy.” .

Although the channel should stay closed for 2 days in order that the Prosecutor’s Office can perform the investigations as a part of the investigation into what occurred, among the staff wakened early this Wednesday like daily for the morning information broadcasts, amongst them Jorge García . He is the journalist accountable for overlaying police studies, the one who is aware of the pink zones of Guayaquil, and even with the excessive ranges of insecurity he has continued to take action. For only a few minutes he was saved from being contained in the canal. He arrived a couple of minutes after the criminals entered and he was the one who referred to as the Police. “My family didn’t want me to leave the house, we’re all scared,” he says.

The Police managed to arrest 13 of the abductors, however TC Televisión staff describe that they managed to rely extra. Among these arrested there are two minors, and the oldest was no older than 25 years previous. They can be charged with against the law of terrorism.

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