RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — A gunman took 16 bus passengers hostage for three hours and shot one of them before surrendering at a bus station in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on Tuesday.

“The hostage-taker surrendered, he was arrested, all the hostages were released, they are safe,” Colonel Marco Andrade of the military police announced about three hours after the crisis began.

Witnesses said the man opened fire before boarding the bus at the busy Novo Rio station and holding captive a child, six elderly persons and nine others for reasons police have not disclosed.

Additionally, a 34-year-old man was shot in the chest and abdomen and was in a serious condition in hospital, said Rio health secretary Daniel Soranz.

The surrender came after agents from the elite Special Operations Battalion were deployed to the scene to conduct negotiations, according to police.

Officers had cordoned off the station after evacuating all employees and passengers, who crowded in the hundreds outside while police tried to reason with the gunman.

Images broadcast by the Globo news channel showed agents escorting a man in a colorful pink T-shirt, green Bermuda shorts and short hair towards a police van after the incident as passengers exited the bus, including a young woman with a baby in her arms.

The hostage-taker’s identity has not been revealed, but Rio military police secretary Luiz Henrique Marinho said it appeared he had been trying to “flee” the city over “problems in his faction,” in apparent reference to a criminal gang.

“At some point he felt threatened by someone, a person or a group, on the bus, and that’s when he fired the shots,” Marinho told Globo.