A man shot and wounded a security guard and held 40 people hostage at a call centre in Guatemala City on Monday, demanding to see his ex-wife’s boyfriend, but surrendered to police after a five-hour siege.
Police said the 29-year-old man threatened to blow up the call centre on the fifth floor of a Guatemala City building with an explosive device he was carrying.
Police negotiators persuaded the man to free his hostages and give himself up.
Police said the hostage-taker, Luis Fernando Escobar, had a ”sentimental” problem and had demanded to see his former wife’s boyfriend who worked at the call centre.
The hostages, mainly employees of the call centre, streamed out of the modern building, some of them in tears, after the man released them.
”Everyone is well, thank God,” a woman relative of one of the hostages told Guatemalan radio as the stand-off ended. — Reuters