Thursday, April 17, 2008 Soldier nabbed for slay By Karlon N. Rama Sun.Star Staff Reporter
OPERATIVES from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) 7 yesterday arrested an Army sergeant believed to be behind the killing of a businessman and former candidate for councilor in Daanbantayan town last March 9.
Agents tailed the bus Sgt. Moises Ludoc took from Barangay Bateria in Daanbantayan and arrested him when he disembarked in Mandaue City.
He was armed with a .38 revolver but didn’t resist arrest. He was with his wife and two kids.
Ludoc matched the image on the cartographic sketch NBI investigators, led by supervising agent Jose Ermie Monsanto, made of the killer based on the description of witnesses.
Ludoc, in an interview at the NBI stockade, denied killing Renerio Arrogante III.
He said he has been stationed at the 11th Infantry Battalion headquarters in Maruha, Barangay 9, Isabela, Negros Occidental since Jan. 22.
He added that his superior officers at Charlie Company can confirm that he was not in Cebu during the killing.
Before his posting at Negros Occidental, he was stationed at the AFP Central Command headquarters in Barangay Apas, taking a course at the 3rd Army Training Group.
Ludoc said he came to Cebu only to process his claim with the Home Development Mutual Fund. He said his 10-year contribution had matured and could now be claimed.
His wife Fernelyn confirmed this. She said he arrived from Negros Occidental last Monday to process his papers. She said she decided to accompany him, together with their two children, to maximize their time together.
Fernelyn is a native of Bateria in Daanbantayan.
But three witnesses independently picked Ludoc out from a lineup at the NBI headquarters.
One of them was Julieta Arrogante, Renerio’s widow, who executed an affidavit saying that Ludoc was the same man who, wearing a dark shirt, denim shorts, slippers and a palos (golf) hat, shot her husband repeatedly that day.
“Because of the traumatic experience, I will never forget his face. He was also about a meter away from me when he shot my husband and we stared at each other,” she said.
In the affidavit, she recounted how her husband fell after being shot and how she kept telling her husband to hang on and to not leave her as their son Renerio IV ran to get the car to bring him to the hospital.
Monsanto said his team went to Bateria four times over the past few weeks because of information that Ludoc had been spotted. They got their first big break last Monday when an asset confirmed his presence.
He said the asset shadowed the army man and was on board the bus Ludoc took to Mandaue City yesterday.
He said two teams were dispatched. The first team caught up with the bus and began tailing it somewhere in Danao City. The other team was positioned in Basak, Mandaue City.
The second team joined the convoy after the bus passed them by and kept on following the vehicle until the Ludocs disembarked.
“I don’t know why I got picked up. They told me that I was a suspect in a murder case. But I don’t even know who got killed. The gun they found with me belongs to another soldier and it is defective. I brought it here to have it fixed,” Ludoc said in Cebuano.
A lone gunman shot and killed Arrogante while he was talking with his wife and son outside the family-owned Mainroad Square compound in Barangay Poblacion.
The names of Daanbantayan Vice Mayor Maria Luisa Loot, her husband Senior Supt. Vicente Loot, and son, incumbent mayor Sun Shimura, were immediately dragged into the shooting.
They denied this and facilitated an P500,000 offer for any information on the killing.
Arrogante, more popularly known as “Gogong”, ran for councilor in the May 14 elections under the ticket of Augusto Corro, but lost. Corro ran against Shimura.
Arrogante was also allegedly the one who filed a bigamy case against the Loots.
The gunman, in turn, was described to be a professional killer as he was able to calmly walk from the crime scene to a waiting motorcycle after the shooting.
