The last hour of the news program 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 broadcaster's building in Guayaquil. The screams and blows echoed down the hallway to the study. It was around 2:15 p.m. on Tuesday.
Ecuador experienced a day of terror with several simultaneous attacks involving bombs, burning cars, shootings and murders in various cities across the country. In five prisons, 125 prison leaders and 15 administrative personnel are still being kidnapped by prisoners. Videos circulated on social networks 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 in the newsroom ran to find a place to hide,” said Alina Manrique, editor-in-chief, who ran into a toilet. “Everyone was looking for a place to hide, the archives, the toilets, they went to other floors.” Two other companions hid with her, from where they wrote to her and asked for help.
moment when they point the gun at José Luis Calderón while he is anchoring the news.
“Then we were… very silent,” Alina explains, “until we heard them coming towards us and starting to knock on the door with insults and threats that they would kill us and we had no choice but to join “Hands up.” They beat them, tore a chain from their necks and threw them to the floor in the studio, where an unprecedented moment was broadcast. About twenty hooded men with masks, some with pants down to their hips, with guns and dynamite took over the TC Television studio in the middle of the news broadcast.
Ten more hostages were with the editor-in-chief. The terrorists asked for microphones and the sound engineer did as they asked. Everyone tried to stay calm, in the midst of the terror, because they knew that they were being kidnapped by twenty young people who were going from side to side, dragging people and pointing at their heads, kicking them on the ground and shooting them in the air. One of the bullets ricocheted off the leg of one of the cameramen, who is still in the hospital.
Journalist Stalin Baquerizo and a companion ran into another bathroom to hide. “They shouted 'We are the active Tiguerones' while I heard the screams of my companions, the shots, the knocking on the doors, the breaking of glass on the floor,” the journalist recounts the minutes of panic he experienced, as he tried not to do it his breathing could be heard. The kidnappers asked about him, one of the visible faces of the news broadcast, and when they were told that he was not there, the criminals frantically picked up the journalist José Luis Calderón from the ground and put dynamite in his jacket pocket and they were forced to to send a message to the police: not to enter the canal, to leave.
Almost thirty minutes passed before helicopter and police shots were heard. The criminals tried to escape by taking some of the people they had pinned to the ground and using them as human shields. Among them Alina. “We were six hostages and they took us looking for a way out until we arrived at another smaller studio where they forced us to record videos asking the police not to shoot and to leave.”
When the uniformed officers entered, the hostages remained in the middle. “I was afraid of dying from a police shot 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 that I had survived…” says Alina, who describes the moment as a traumatic experience: “At that moment, even in Ecuador, it is very easy to contact journalists kill.” easy.” .
Although the station must remain closed for two days to allow the Public Prosecutor's Office to carry out investigations into the incident, some of the workers got up early this Wednesday, like every day, for the morning news programs, including Jorge García. He is the journalist in charge of reporting the police reports, who knows the red zones of Guayaquil, and despite the high level of uncertainty, he has continued to do so. He was only saved from being in the canal for a few minutes. He arrived a few minutes after the criminals entered and called the police. “My family didn’t want me to leave the house, we were all scared,” he says.
Police managed to arrest 13 of the kidnappers, but TC Televisión employees report that they managed to count even more. Two minors were among those arrested; the oldest was not older than 25 years. You are accused of a terrorist crime.
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