The last hour of the newscast on the TC Televisión channel had begun. The presenters Jorge Rendón and Vanessa Filella were in the studio when the shots were heard a few meters from the reception of the national channel building in Guayaquil. The screams and blows came down the hallway towards the study. It was around 2:15 p.m. on Tuesday.
Ecuador had a day of terror with several simultaneous attacks with bombs, burning cars, shootings and murders in different cities of the country. In five prisons, 125 prison guides and 15 people from the administrative area are still kidnapped by the prisoners. On social networks, videos circulated in which some of them were allegedly murdered while the Government remained silent. There was a lot 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 bathroom. “Everyone was looking for a place to hide, the archive, the bathrooms, they went up to other floors.” Two other companions hid with her from where they wrote to ask for help.
“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 chain from her neck and threw them to the floor in the studio from where an unprecedented moment was being broadcast. About twenty hooded men, with masks, some with their pants below their hips, with weapons and dynamites took over the TC Television studio in the middle of the newscast.
Ten other hostages were with the editor-in-chief. The terrorists asked for microphones and the sound engineer did what they asked, everyone tried to remain calm in the midst of the terror of knowing that they were kidnapped by twenty young people who moved from one side to the other, dragged people, pointed at them. head, they kicked them on the floor and shot them in the air. One of those bullets ricocheted off the leg of one of the cameramen who remains hospitalized.
Journalist Stalin Baquerizo ran to another bathroom to hide 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 about the minutes of panic he experienced while trying not to his breathing could be heard. The kidnappers asked about him, who is one of the visible faces of the news program, and when they were told that he was not there, the criminals, frantic, picked up journalist José Luis Calderón from the floor, placed a dynamite in his jacket pocket and They were forced to give a message to the Police: not to enter the canal, to leave.
Almost thirty minutes passed until helicopters and police shots were heard. The criminals tried to escape by taking some of the people they had held on the floor to use them as a human shield. Among them, Alina. “We were five 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 were left in the middle. “I was afraid of dying from a shot from the police or from one of these guys who were very nervous,” until 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 moment as a traumatic experience: “At this moment it is very easy to kill journalists in Ecuador, too easy.” .
Although the channel must remain closed for two days so that the Prosecutor's Office can carry out the investigations as part of the investigation into what happened, some of the workers woke up early this Wednesday like every day for the morning news broadcasts, among them Jorge García . He is the journalist in charge of covering police reports, the one who knows the red zones of Guayaquil, and even with the high levels of insecurity he has continued to do so. For just a few minutes he was saved from being inside the canal. He arrived a few minutes after the criminals entered and he was the one who called 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 kidnappers, but TC Televisión workers describe that they managed to count more. Among those arrested there are two minors, and the oldest was no older than 25 years old. They will be charged with a crime of terrorism.
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