HK court told: Hostage-taker’s mood changed from friendly to 'extremely angry'

From friendly to "extremely angry." This was how survivors of last year's Manila hostage tragedy described the mood of dismissed Senior Inspector Rolando Mendoza shortly before he started shooting hostages and triggered a bloody end to the crisis. "The court was ... told that the hostage-taker was friendly at first, but he became 'extremely angry' before he started shooting hostages one by one," according to a court hearing update Wednesday night on Radio Television Hong Kong. Earlier, witnesses at the Hong Kong inquest narrated that Mendoza did not intend to harm anybody during the first stages of the crisis last Aug. 23. Mendoza died along with eight tourists from Hong Kong during a botched rescue attempt, some 11 hours after the hostage crisis began. An initial investigation by Philippine authorities had shown Mendoza took the tourists hostage to demand his reinstatement into the police force. He also became agitated after seeing on a television monitor inside the bus that cops were arresting his brother Gregorio Mendoza, also a policeman. Meanwhile, a survivor in the tragedy, Lee Ying-chuen, testfied she, tour leader Masa Tse, and another tourist, Ken Leung, tried but failed to grab Mendoza's gun. The two men were among the eight people later killed, with Leung shot while trying to throw himself on Mendoza. The Aug. 23 incident has strained relations between the Philippines and Hong Kong, which issued a "black" travel advisory discouraging travel to the Philippines. — LBG, GMA News