A wanted fugitive took his three-year-old son hostage during a tense standoff in Yerevan today.  The child was freed and the man detained after several hours of negotiation with the country's Chief of Police.

According to local media, the man took the boy hostage when police tried to ‘neutralise’ him near a hydropower plant in Yerevan’s Arabkir district. The man, whose name has not been released to the public, refused to surrender to the police. 

‘He fired a gun then kept his 3-year-old son with him, threatening to harm him if taken into custody’, Ashot Aharonyan, a spokesperson for Yerevan police, told OC Media.

Armenia’s Chief of Police Vahe Ghazaryan personally negotiated with the hostage-taker for two hours, after which the man surrendered, released his son, and was taken into custody. No one was harmed.

Aharonyan added that the hostage-taker ‘has been charged with three articles of  Armenia’s Criminal code’ and that a preliminary investigation is underway.