A man brandishing a knife who took a woman hostage in the Mong Ha neighbourhood on Saturday is hearing impaired and is undergoing a medical examination at the public hospital, the Social Welfare Bureau’s (IAS) Family and Community Services Department Chief Daniel Tang Yuk Wa said yesterday.
The man, who is in his 50s, brandished a knife when he took the 28-year-old woman hostage in a take-away shop on the ground floor of the Trust Legend residential building in Mong Ha on Saturday at about 8 p.m.
Tang said that when they learnt about the case and that the male person involved has a hearing impairment, the bureau deployed several social workers and a sign language interpreter to the scene for assistance.
Tang said his staff would follow-up on the case and check whether the man had ever been in contact with the bureau.
According to Judiciary Police (PJ) information, the police were informed about the incident at 8:38 p.m. on Saturday. Police officers as well as four members of the police’s crisis negotiation team arrived at the scene at 8:45 p.m. to speak to the man.
A PJ spokesperson said that during the crisis negotiation, the man was initially quite agitated and had slurred speech, at times pointing his knife at the woman, demanding people at the scene to go away as he would otherwise kill the woman.
After about 30 minutes of negotiation, the man let the woman go and surrendered, and the case was transferred to the Public Security Police (PSP) to investigate.
According to the PSP yesterday, both the man and woman are local residents, and neither of them were injured in the incident, adding that the woman told the police that she didn’t know the man.
A PSP statement said yesterday that as the man was still being examined at the public Conde de São Januário Hospital Centre, the police had not yet been able to get a statement from him.
Hostage situations are very rare in Macau.
This image shows yesterday’s front-page story by Macau’s top-selling Chinese-language newspaper Macao Daily News about Saturday night’s hostage drama, headlined “Man with knife taking woman hostage subdued”.
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