Philippine police checking reports that a kidnapped American has died after being shot

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine police officials said Thursday they are checking reports that a kidnapped American died after being shot twice while resisting his Oct. 17 abduction by gunmen in the country’s south.

Elliot Onil Eastman, 26, from Vermont, was shot twice with an M16 rifle while trying to fight off his four kidnappers, who posed as police officers, in the coastal town of Sibuco in Zamboanga del Norte province, police said.

The kidnappers dragged him to a motorboat and sped off, according to earlier police reports.

A massive search for Eastman and his abductors led to the arrest of a number of suspects, but he has not been found. Three suspects were killed in a gunbattle with police in the south last month.

Regional police spokesperson Lt. Col. Ramoncelio Sawan said investigators received information from a relative of one of the suspects that Eastman died due to gunshot wounds in the thigh and abdomen while being taken away by his abductors.

The kidnappers decided to throw his body into the sea after he died, the relative said. The information about Eastman’s death was later corroborated by a key suspect in the kidnapping who was arrested recently, and his sworn statement has been submitted to government prosecutors, Sawan said.

Criminal complaints of kidnapping have been filed against several suspects, he said.

“We are constrained to believe that he has died. All of the information that we have points to that,” Sawan said. But he added that without the victim’s body, “we’re still leaving a little bit of hope that it may not be the case” and police would continue their investigation.

Philippine police have informed Eastman’s Filipino wife and the U.S. Embassy in Manila about his reported death, Sawan said.

The embassy said it’s aware of the police report and is coordinating with Philippine authorities, but did not comment further due to privacy considerations.

Eastman traveled out of the Philippines and returned to Sibuco to attend his wife’s graduation when he was kidnapped. He had been posting Facebook videos of his life in Sibuco, a poor, remote coastal town, where the suspects spotted him, police earlier said.

They said the suspects appeared to be common criminals who did not belong to any Muslim rebel groups which have been accused of ransom kidnappings in the past.

Security problems have long hounded the southern Philippines, the homeland of a Muslim minority in the largely Roman Catholic nation.

The southern third of the Philippines has bountiful resources but has long been hamstrung by poverty, insurgencies and outlaws.

A 2014 peace agreement between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the largest of several Muslim separatist groups, has considerably eased widespread fighting in the south. Relentless military offensives have weakened smaller armed groups such as the Abu Sayyaf, reducing kidnappings, bombings and other violence.

The Abu Sayyaf has targeted Americans and other Western tourists and missionaries, most of whom were freed after ransoms were paid. A few were killed, including American Guillermo Sobero, who was beheaded on the southern island of Basilan, and a U.S. missionary, Martin Burnham, who was killed while Philippine army forces were trying to rescue him and his wife, Gracia Burnham, in 2002 in a rainforest near Sibuco.

By JIM GOMEZ
Associated Press