The hostage taking in the Apple Store in February this year was experienced by employee Alex Manuputty in a cramped broom closet. From that hiding place he helped the police and protected three customers. ‘I thought: this is my business, these are my customers.’
Alex Manuputty (52) draws a map of the Apple Store on Leidseplein in Amsterdam on a writing pad. He draws lines, puts arrows (of the direction of the bullets), squares (of the tables) and dots (of the hostage-taker’s position). He was just helping a customer when a commotion broke out in the shop just after 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, February 22. “I heard people screaming and thought maybe a thief had been caught, but suddenly saw colleagues and customers, sometimes already falling, running to the cafeteria door at the back of the shop. People standing at the entrance doors fled the store.”
A man in camouflage clothing stood by the stairs in the center of the store. He yelled and fired around with an automatic weapon. “I thought: now it’s serious,” says Manuputty.
Broom closet
He started a sprint. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two women standing near the elevator – it later turned out to be a mother with her 13-year-old daughter. “I quit. I knew they shouldn’t take the elevator and said, ‘Follow me, we have to get out of here’.”
Manuputty’s customer, who had initially tried to flee through a front door, suddenly found himself next to him again. “I wanted to go to the canteen with them, but suddenly looked straight into the barrel of the hostage-taker’s weapon. A tree in the business stood between us. The man didn’t seem to notice me.”
With a special pass he quickly opened the door of a broom closet next to the elevator. He let his customers in first, then dived in himself. “I peeked around the corner one more time to see if we could get away, but it was too dangerous. The man was standing two meters away from us and was wearing a bomb vest. I knew: this is wrong. It’s unbelievable that the bullets didn’t hit anyone. We were all lucky: angels on our shoulders.”
In the meantime, the thirteen-year-old girl in the closet had called the police. She first got on the phone with an employee of the control room and was eventually transferred to a negotiator. “I took over the phone. I felt responsible and thought: this is my business, they are my customers, I have to take care of them.”
Brave
“We had a division of roles. My client, a student, listened to the sounds of the hostage-taker with his ear to the wall all the time. He also quickly taped the peephole in the door with a sticker from the closet. The girl took care of her mother. She didn’t make a sound and was so brave.”
Manuputty, who had worked in the Apple Store sales department for three years at the time and was supposed to be off that Tuesday, continued to talk to the negotiator on the phone and provided the police with information. “I whispered about the store, where the customers and employees were, through which entrances the police could enter unnoticed and where we were exactly. If the police would come in firing, we could just be in the line of fire.”
The negotiator gave several instructions. Manuputty was advised to remove his company clothing over his T-shirt. The foursome had to sit low in the cramped cupboard measuring one and a half by two metres. In case of discovery, the advice was to cooperate with the hostage-taker’s requests.
Agony
The negotiator could watch through cameras in the store and warned the four if the hostage-taker came near the cupboard. “We had to be very quiet.”
Every now and then they heard the hostage-taker pacing back and forth. But it was precisely the moments of silence that terrified Manuputty. “I thought: where is he? What is he doing? Will he find us? Does he hear us? Those silences, not knowing what is happening, those were the worst moments. My heart was in my throat. I thought: this is the end. My life passed me by. I said goodbye to my sisters, my fifteen year old son and two friends. I texted them: ‘I’m stuck, I’m being held hostage, and the perpetrator is shooting’.”
Manuputty realized that around 9 p.m., the closing time of the Apple Store, both the lights and music in the store would automatically shut off. “That was my big concern. Without the music, we were in even more danger. Then the hostage-taker could hear us with movement or the slightest sound. The walls of the closet are paper thin. We have silenced all devices.”
Unwell
On Instagram, Manuputty, who received all kinds of images of the hostage situation, suddenly saw reports circulating that four people were in a closet. “We were very shocked. Fortunately, the police intervened in the direction of the reporters.”
Another complication came from inside the closet: the thirteen-year-old girl’s mother became unwell in the middle of the evening. “She was getting worse and worse. I asked her daughter if I could touch her and take off and take off her coat, scarf and headscarf.”
The negotiator, meanwhile, was constantly on the phone with Manuputty. When the woman’s situation worsened, an ambulance driver came on the phone. “He asked me to put my Apple Watch on the woman to measure her heart rate and rhythm. We had to keep talking to her.”
Stoop!
Midway through the evening, Manuputty wanted to leave the closet. “I couldn’t stand it a few times, I really felt that I had to get out of that closet. My negotiator remained very calm, told me not to, and sometimes joked. He had such a nice voice, spoke to me like he was a friend.”
The foursome’s phone was almost out of battery. “I only had one percent left. I helped the police establish contact with the student’s laptop.”
That was no longer necessary. Around 10:30 PM, Manuputty suddenly heard a commotion outside the shop. “We got the signal ‘Duck over!’. Moments later there was a pounding on the door: ‘Police, police. Open the door’. There were five or six policemen with heavy weapons at the door. We were free.”
Nightmares
The foursome were taken care of in the nearby Marriott hotel, with pizza and drinks. The mother of the thirteen-year-old girl was doing relatively well afterwards.
Manuputty: “I met and hugged the negotiator there.” After that, everyone had to report immediately. Manuputty got home about four and fell asleep wearily.
The following days it was very difficult for him. “I was scared, stressed, started stuttering, had nightmares and kept reliving that night.”
Manuputty went to the talk sessions organized by the Apple Store. “That gave me an idea of how the whole evening had gone.” The Bulgarian customer who was forced to spend almost five hours with the hostage-taker and escaped his attacker – that escape would herald the end of the hostage-taking – thinks Manuputty is ‘so brave’.
Manuputty, the other three in the closet and the Bulgarian customer received a hero’s pin from the municipality of Amsterdam a month later in the official residence of the mayor. He does not consider himself a hero. “I did what I had to do.”
salsa sales
At that time, Manuputty began EMDR therapy to process the trauma. That treatment continues. He still finds it difficult to talk about the hostage-taking. To help himself further, he started salsa dancing at Salsa District. “That helped me a lot. I got rid of my stuttering after just four lessons.” He also kickboxes four times a week, ‘to get rid of my aggression’. He is slowly getting better with ups and downs.
Manuputty would like to return to the Apple Store, but realizes that it will take time. “I am still dealing with the hostage situation: what happened to me? What have I done? If this…? If that…? What if it had gone wrong? I still have a long way to go. I’m still in that closet every day.”
