Manila, Philippines – Philippine police officials said Thursday they were investigating reports that a kidnapped American died after being shot twice while resisting his abduction Oct. 17 by gunmen in the country’s south. Elliot EastmanThe 26-year-old from Vermont was shot twice with an M16 rifle in the coastal town of Sibuco in Zamboanga del Norte province as he tried to fend off his four kidnappers, who were posing as police officers, police said.

According to previous police reports, the kidnappers dragged him onto a motorboat and sped away.

An extensive search for Eastman and his captors led to the arrest of several suspects, but he was not found. Three suspects were killed in a shootout with police in the south last month.

Regional police spokesman Lt. Col. Ramoncelio Sawan said investigators received information from a relative of one of the suspects that Eastman died from gunshot wounds to the thigh and stomach as he was being taken away by his captors. The kidnappers decided to throw his body into the sea after his death, the relative said.

The information about Eastman’s death was later confirmed by a key kidnapping suspect who was recently arrested, and his affidavit was submitted to prosecutors, Sawan said. Criminal charges of kidnapping have been filed against several suspects, he said.

“We are forced to believe that he died. All the information we have points to this,” Sawan said. However, he added that without the victim’s body, “there is still some hope that this might not be the case” and police will continue their investigation.

Philippine police have notified Eastman’s Filipino wife and the U.S. Embassy in Manila of his reported death, Sawan said.

The embassy said it was aware of the police report and was coordinating with Philippine authorities, but did not comment further for privacy reasons.

Eastman left the Philippines and was returning to Sibuco to attend his wife’s graduation ceremony when he was kidnapped. He had posted YouTube and Facebook videos of his life in Sibuco, a poor, remote coastal town where the suspects discovered him, police said previously.

They said the suspects appeared to be common criminals, not affiliated with any Muslim rebel group, who have been accused of ransom extortion in the past.

Security problems have long plagued the southern Philippines, home to a Muslim minority in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation.

The southern third of the Philippines is rich in resources but has long been crippled by poverty, insurgency and outlaws.

On his YouTube page, Eastman said he came to the Philippines and met “the love of my life deep in the mountains” of Zamboanga del Norte, which he would explore to give his followers a glimpse of “daily life as…” to offer the “first and only foreigner” to settle permanently in the remote region.

A 2014 peace deal between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the largest of several Muslim separatist groups, has significantly eased widespread fighting in the south. Relentless military offensives have weakened smaller armed groups like the Abu Sayyaf and reduced the number of kidnappings, bombings and other violence.

The Abu Sayyaf has targeted Americans and other Western tourists and missionaries, most of whom were released after paying ransoms. Some were killed, including American Guillermo Sobero, who was beheaded on the southern island of Basilan, and a U.S. missionary, Martin Burnham, who was killed in 2002 when Philippine forces tried to rescue him and his wife Gracia Burnham in a rainforest in the Near Sibuco.