Sunday, October 07, 2007 Slays provoke street checks
RANDOM checkpoints started Friday night and the Cebu City police began planning to take gang members’ profiles, as a shooting spree snuffed out four lives in less than 36 hours.
Barely a day after the three shootings last Thursday night, a computer engineering student from the University of Visayas was gunned down Friday night. Mark Vic Lucero, 19, did not make it alive to the Cebu City Medical Center.
Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) Director Patrocinio Comendador directed Senior Insp. George Ylanan of the Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Bureau (CIIB) to come up with an updated list of fraternity members linked to crimes, especially those who have standing warrants of arrest.
The CCPO’s community relations section was also tasked to coordinate with barangay officials in profiling gang members in each neighborhood.
Supt. Pablo Labra II, CCPO deputy chief for operations, told reporters that unlike fraternities whose leaders the police have identified, in the case of the gangs, the authorities have no way of reaching out. They do not know who the leaders are.
The profiling of gang members will be used to initiate dialogues with them and their parents, Labra said.
SPO4 Alex Dacua told Sun.Star Cebu yesterday that two men, one of them armed with a handgun, carried out the latest attack at 7:15 p.m. at the corner of Mabini and Colon Sts.
The perpetrators were reportedly spotted getting inside a KTV Bar along Mabini St. and appeared to be looking for someone.
When the perpetrators went out, they saw Lucero standing nearby.
Without any provocation, the gunman shot Lucero.
Despite his injury, Lucero ran away, but the gunman caught up with him and finished him off with several shots. The perpetrators left on foot.
Dacua said the gunman was described to be muscular and was sporting an orange T-shirt and jeans.
Based on the scar in his right wrist, Dacua added, Lucero could be a member of a fraternity.
On the shootings last Thursday that left three people dead and injured four others, SPO1 Jay Yballe said they now have witnesses that are helping the Homicide Section come up with sketches so the perpetrators can be identified.
At least two witnesses expressed willingness to help the police solve the killings, Yballe said.
That the shooting spree was fraternity-related is the strongest angle they are investigating, he added. (JST)
