An American YouTuber living in the Philippines was kidnapped from his home by a group of masked gunmen who shot him in the leg and whisked him off on a speedboat, local authorities said Friday.
Elliot Onil Eastman, a 26-year-old Vermont native, was taken at gunpoint from Sibuco, a coastal town on the island of Mindanao in the country’s south, late Thursday by four men apparently posing as police officers.
The suspects, armed with M16 rifles and dressed in black clothing, forced their way into Eastman’s home where he lives with his Filipina wife – and opened fire when he tried to fight them off, cops said.
The men then forced an injured Eastman onto the getaway boat and fled out to sea, authorities added.
Several Filipino law enforcement agencies have since launched a “hot pursuit operation” in a bid to find the missing American and his kidnappers.
The abduction was reported to cops by Eastman’s father-in-law, police said.
Eastman has been living in the Philippines since May after meeting his future wife, Karisha Jala Eastman, when he visited the country a year earlier.
After they tied the knot in July 2023, Eastman returned to the US for a brief period before permanently relocating to his Muslim spouse’s hometown, police said.
“Based on the initial profile given to us, he got married to a local in the area,” regional police spokeswoman Lieutenant-Colonel Helen Galvez told Agence France-Presse.
“He has been there for about five months.”
Eastman regularly shares footage of his life in the Philippines on his YouTube channel and other social media platforms.
“I came to the Philippines about a year and half ago where I met the love of my life deep in the mountains of the red zone of the Philippines,” the bio on his YouTube page states.
“Zamboanga del Norte is a recently developed area of the Philippines that was once only accessible by boat,” he continues.
“I will be showing you my day to day life as the first and only foreigner to have ever lived here in sibuco for a long period of time.”
The southern Philippines, the homeland of a Muslim minority in the largely Roman Catholic nation, is home to the Abu Sayyaf group, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the US and the Philippines.
The group has been known, in the past, to carry out mass kidnappings for ransom – particularly targeting American and other Western tourists and religious missionaries.
As of Friday, police said no one had demanded a ransom over Eastman’s abduction.
A US embassy spokesman in Manila told reporters that it was “aware of the reports and are coordinating with local authorities.”
They declined to comment further on the abduction.
With Post wires
