Angeles hostage-taker shot dead

ANGELES CITY — Guns and liquor just don’t mix.

A security guard learned this the fatal way after a mobile police team shot him dead to save the life of a laundrywoman whom he held hostage inside a passenger jeepney along the busy MacArthur Highway in Barangay Balibago here at about 11 p.m. last Sunday.

Police identified the hostage-taker as Conrado Miranda, 46, of the Royal Security Agency and a resident of the Madapdap resettlement.

He took hostage and inflicted two gunshot wounds on laundrywoman Gina Sapungan, 37, of Barangay Pampang.

Police said Miranda was drinking beer at a barbecue stall along Fields Avenue near Clark Field’s main gate when he saw a parked motorcycle and tried to cart it away.

Unable to start the engine, he looked for its owner and asked the man at gunpoint to do it.

Miranda, however, fired his caliber .38 pistol, attracting the attention of a mobile police team, headed by Senior Inspector Ed Tuazon, a sharpshooter.

The suspect, seeing the police team approaching him, fired another shot and fled on foot toward the MacArthur Highway where he flagged down a passenger jeepney.

Seeing Miranda wielding a pistol, the jeepney driver and his passengers jumped off the vehicle. But Miranda was able to grab Sapungan by the neck and held her hostage. Sapungan’s husband, Russel, 42, was among those who were able to flee.

Tuazon negotiated with Miranda who, in turn, asked for a driver for the jeepney. Miranda later fired his gun, hitting Sapungan twice in the left shoulder.

Witness Ashley Manabat, a writer of the Pampanga News, said it was then that Tuazon, whom he knew to be one of the best sharpshooters in the local police force, fired at Miranda, hitting him five times in the chest and a sixth one in one eye.

Police said Miranda had a record of firing his pistol whenever he got drunk. — With Ric Sapnu