RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil: A gunman who shot and wounded two people and took 17 passengers hostage Tuesday at the main bus station in Rio de Janeiro has surrendered to the authorities and freed his captives after a dialogue, Brazilian police said.
“The hostage-taker surrendered, he was arrested, all the hostages were released, they are safe,” said Colonel Marco Andrade of the military police.
Earlier, police said that negotiations between agents from the elite Special Operations Battalion (BOPE) unit and the hostage-taker were underway on site after he shot two people and took hostages on a bus at the Novo Rio bus station.
The wounded were taken to hospital.
In total, 17 people were held, including children and elderly, Andrade told reporters outside the station. He said one person had been shot three times, while another had lesser injuries.
Police have not released the identity of the hostage-taker or motives behind the act.
There was chaos at the station in the center of Rio, where buses leave for all regions of Brazil, with police deployed around the area, showed the images broadcast by the Globonews channel.
According to a witness, a man drew a gun, started shooting and entered the bus.
Television footage telecast a blue bus stopped in the middle of an empty parking lot.
In 2000, a hostage situation on a bus in a Rio’s residential area left two people dead.
The incident kept the nation captivated as it was broadcast live on television for hours, and inspired the 2008 movie “Last Stop 174.”
In 2019, a hijacker armed with a fake gun was killed by police in the same city after he held a busload of passengers hostage for several hours on a major bridge linking Rio to the town of Niteroi.
Brazil’s most iconic city, Rio de Janeiro has long been plagued by high crime rates linked to poverty and inequality.
