Police succeeded in rescuing a hostage held in a bookstore in Tan Binh District in Ho Chi Minh City by a young man.
At noon on March 15, a young man stepped into Phuong Nam Bookstore inside MaxiMark supermarket in Tan Binh District and began to behave badly.
When the bookstore security guards asked him to go out, he suddenly grabbed a scissor and held hostage a female employee of the bookstore.
All customers and employees at the bookstore panicked and tried to run out of the bookstore. Someone called the emergency no 113 and the local police rushed to the scene and ordered the man to release his hostage Ngau Ngoc Lan. He refused to obey the police but asked to be provided with a taxi to go to the southern province of Dong Nai or else he would kill his hostage.
The girl hostage was so frightened that she at times faint.
A policeman disguised himself as a taxi driver and drove a Vinasun taxi to the scene. When the man and his hostage got into the car, the 'driver' used an electrical baton to strike him and subdued him immediately.
The man was later taken to the Tan Binh District Police Station, where he gave his name as Voong Hoang Minh, 27, from Tan Phu district of the southern province of Dong Nai. He told the police he had used drugs with a group of boys the day before and the next morning he had a delusion that an underground gang was chasing and trying to kill him.
Therefore, when he entered the police station he insisted on staying there so that the police could protect him from this imaginary gang. The police turned him down and believe he had intentionally tried to abduct the girl at the bookstore to get attention.
