LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. -- A man trying to protect his property was in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up a hostage along with seven other people, according to police.

At about 2 a.m., a wife called police to report her husband missing.

David L. May, of Grandview, Mo., had gone to a house in Lee's Summit that the couple used for storage. He planned to watch the house because it had previously been burglarized, according to police.

Thursday night, he called his wife and told her that his cell phone was dead but that he'd be home at about midnight.

She became worried when he didn't come home and met police at the storage house on Southwest Jefferson Street. At the house, she showed police a video system that May had previously set up to tape movement around the front the house.

Police watched the video and found footage from 9:55 p.m. of a man being chased through the yard by another man, according to police.

Officers believed that man was May, so they called for more police and investigators started to search for him in the area. The set up a perimeter in the area and checked every house and business within that area for clues.

Shortly after 7 a.m., a man stepped out of a business within the area and was questioned by police.

Whatever he said led officers to believe that people were being held hostage in the business at 1212 S.W. Market St., according to police.

Police yelled inside the rear door of the building and ordered anyone inside to come out. Several people walked out of the building, and they each said they'd been held against their will by four men, three of whom were still inside the building.

Again, officers yelled into the business for the three men to come out, and the men did and were taken into custody.

Police used a robot and a real-time video surveillance system to check the building to make sure no one else was inside.

They questioned the hostages and determined that May interrupted an armed robbery, according to police.

He had parked close to a trucking company to watch his house and was taken from his vehicle by one of the suspects at about 9:55 p.m., about the same time that the video surveillance showed a third man chasing a man who turned out to be a fourth person, not May as investigators originally thought.

The man being chased turned out to be the owner of the trucking company. He had briefly escaped during the robbery but recaptured and beaten by the one of the suspects.

"We're still trying to figure out this whole case, for what reason they were in there, how they were held, how did they keep them from leaving, and (there are) a lot of unanswered questions," said Sgt. Mike Childs, of the Lee's Summit Police Department.

The suspects remained in custody Friday afternoon, pending charges.

"It's awful. I was bawling all morning," said Carmen Morales, a girlfriend of a victim. "I felt terrible, but from what I hear, he's all right, so I'm happy and grateful for that."