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Thursday, June 10, 2004
Task force out to catch Choy’s gunman
OPPOSITION candidate Loren Legarda rushed to Cebu City yesterday after learning that her Central Visayas manager, radio commentator Cirse “Choy” Torralba, was ambushed.
She appealed to the police and to Mayor Tomas Osmeña, who also visited Torralba, not to allow the attack to end up like 50 previous assaults against media practitioners that have remained unsolved since 1986.
Both the vice presidential candidate and the mayor were dismayed after Torralba said it took the police at least 30 minutes to reach the crime scene.
“This is a most dastardly act. The authorities should investigate and swiftly bring before the bar of justice whoever was responsible,” said Legarda, a broadcaster before she became senator, then vice presidential candidate.
She believed the attack was not political but related to a personal grudge, which Torralba provoked through his “brave and fierce” commentaries.
Torralba, 53, had just entered his car outside Vacation Hotel on Don Jose Avila St., Cebu City, when a lone gunman opened fire just before 2 p.m. last Tuesday.
He was hit thrice.
The PNP has created a task force to handle the Torralba case, with the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) 7 as the lead agency.
CIDG 7 Chief Salvador Manga Jr. said they are going over Torralba’s involvement in politics, his commentaries and his personal activities as possible angles.
Police investigators already have a cartographic sketch of the gunman, based on the descriptions given by the radio station’s guard and Torralba’s driver.
The gunman was described as 24 to 25 years old, about 5’4”, fair-skin-ned and “good-looking.”
Police have secured four witnesses, as well as Torralba’s room in a private hospital.
Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Bureau Chief Pablo Labra II, for his part, said Torralba admitted to him that there were people who got irked by his commentaries.
Last December, a friend warned him that someone had hired a gunman to kill him.
In a dySS interview, Torralba also said the boyfriends of his lady friends might have gotten mad at him.
Torralba already has suspects in mind but did not give names yet.
Labra also denied reports that the police responded to the alarm late.
Labra said the Mobile Patrol Group and the Special Weapons and Tactics team were dispatched immediately after they received the alarm. Labra and the Homicide Section also went to the crime scene.
“Maybe they were referring to the scene of the crime operations team. Of course they arrived late because we still have to request them to go to the crime scene,” Labra explained.
Meanwhile, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) verified three different license plates, whose units could have been used as the gunman’s getaway vehicle.
NBI 7 Chief Reynaldo Esmeralda said that an investigating team got the plate numbers from the witnesses.
But Land Transportation Office (LTO) records showed that all three license plates are registered outside Cebu and the vehicles do not match the getaway car, a white Nissan sedan.
The NBI 7 did not discount the possibility that the assailant may have been using another plate to avoid detection by authorities.
While waiting for updates from investigators, Torralba was in a positive mood when he entertained visitors, including Cebu City Councilor Vicente Kintanar and Rep. Raul del Mar. RHM/MBG/GC
(June 10, 2004 issue)
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