Manila, Philippines — Philippine police officials said Thursday they are verifying reports that a kidnapped American died after being shot twice while resisting his kidnapping Oct. 17 by gunmen in the country’s south . Elliot Eastman26-year-old from Vermont was shot twice with an M16 rifle while trying to fend off his four captors, who posed as police officers, in the coastal town of Sibuco, Zamboanga del Norte province , the police said.
The kidnappers dragged him to a motorboat and sped off, according to previous police reports.
A massive search for Eastman and his captors led to the arrest of a number of suspects, but he was not found. Three suspects were killed in a shootout with police in the south of the country last month.
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Regional police spokesman Lt. Col. Ramoncelio Sawan said investigators received information from a relative of one of the suspects that Eastman died from gunshot wounds to the thigh and to the abdomen as he was taken away by his captors. The kidnappers decided to throw his body into the sea after his death, the relative said.
The information about Eastman’s death was later corroborated by a key suspect in the kidnapping who was recently arrested, and his affidavit was submitted to government prosecutors, Sawan said. Criminal complaints for kidnapping have been filed against several suspects, he said.
“We are forced to believe that he is dead. All the information we have shows that,” Sawan said. But he added that without the victim’s body, “we still have some hope that maybe this is not the case” and that police would continue their investigation.
Philippine police notified Eastman’s Filipino wife and the U.S. Embassy in Manila of his death, Sawan said.
The embassy said it was aware of the police report and was coordinating with Philippine authorities, but did not comment further due to privacy concerns.
Eastman left the Philippines and returned to Sibuco to attend his wife’s graduation when he was kidnapped. He had posted videos on YouTube and Facebook of his life in Sibuco, a poor and isolated coastal town, where the suspects spotted him, police said earlier.
They said the suspects appeared to be common criminals who did not belong to any Muslim rebel group accused of kidnappings for ransom in the past.
Security concerns have long plagued the southern Philippines, home to a Muslim minority in the largely Catholic country.
The southern third of the Philippines has abundant resources but has long been crippled by poverty, insurgencies and outlaws.
On his YouTube page, Eastman said he came to the Philippines and met “the love of my life deep in the mountains” of Zamboanga del Norte, which he said he would explore to give his subscribers a insight into “daily life as the first and only foreigner” to settle permanently in the remote region.
A peace deal signed in 2014 between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the largest of several Muslim separatist groups, significantly eased widespread fighting in the south. Relentless military offensives have weakened small armed groups such as the Abu Sayyaf, reducing kidnappings, bombings and other violence.
The Abu Sayyaf targeted Americans and other Western tourists and missionaries, most of whom were released after paying ransoms. A few were killed, including American Guillermo Sobero, beheaded on the southern island of Basilan, and American missionary Martin Burnham, killed as Philippine military forces tried to rescue him and his wife, Gracia Burnham, in 2002. a tropical forest near Sibuco.