Rio de Janeiro, Feb 17 (Inditop.com/EFE) A security guard who held his ex-wife hostage for three days in the southern Brazilian city of Canoas set her free and surrendered to the police, authorities said.
Rodrigo Luciano Luz, 32, chose to give himself up after holding the woman hostage for 70 hours and after intense negotiations with the police, who had surrounded the home.
On Friday night Luz entered the home of his ex-wife in Canoas, a suburb of Porto Alegre, and armed with a handgun, threatened to kill her.
The abductor freed her two children Saturday, a 11-year-old boy and a girl of 8, whom he had also taken hostage, and inflicted a gunshot wound on a brother-in-law who tried to enter the residence to talk to him.
After accepting the terms of surrender to the police, Luz released his former wife, Josiane Pontes, 29, around 9 p.m. Monday and emerged handcuffed. He was first taken to a hospital before been sent to a jail in Porto Alegre, capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul.
Pontes was also taken to a hospital because, soon after leaving her home, she fainted in the arms of a police officer.
From the beginning the police dismissed the possibility of a rescue operation to free the woman and chose to wait out the kidnapper.
During three days of negotiations, two police officers took turns speaking with Luz from a cell phone every 10 minutes.
“We managed to establish a relationship of trust and everything we agreed with him we did. That was the basis of the surrender,” said the deputy police chief in Rio Grande do Sul, Col. Jones Calixtrato.
According to family members, Luz did not accept the separation requested by his wife and at one point sought medical attention for depression.
