The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is Jun Ducat. He gets the award for the following.

MANILA (AP) — A man who took a busload of children and teachers hostage from his day-care center in Manila on Wednesday freed them after a 10-hour standoff that he used to denounce corruption and demand better lives for impoverished children.

Clutching dolls, toys and backpacks, the children began filing off the bus shortly after 7 p.m. (1100 GMT), as Jun Ducat — clutching an unpinned grenade and with an assault rifle slung across his chest — had promised in a rambling message delivered via a loudspeaker hours earlier.

After the children disembarked, Ducat — a 56-year-old civil engineer who has staged attention-grabbing stunts in the past — put the pin back in the grenade and surrendered.

White candles had been lit near the bus, on Ducat's request. Some were placed under the yellow police tape used to cordon off the area; police and onlookers clutched others.

Ducat apologized to his students and to police, but cautioned authorities to stick to their promises to provide the children with a good education.

*****

Police meanwhile drove Ducat away.

"I accept that I should be jailed because what I did was against the law," he said in an interview with The Associated Press shortly before the standoff ended.

Manila police district chief Danilo Abarzosa said Ducat will be charged with 32 counts of illegal detention and abduction — each count is punishable by up to 12 years in prison — along with illegal possession of explosives and illegal possession of firearms.

What a nut! Endangering over 30 lives for a dumb political stunt. Hopefully Jun Ducat will spend of his life in jail where he belongs, but first I make him today's Knucklehead of the Day.

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