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Monday, December 27, 2004
Gunmen flee after killing 4 suspects
CEBU -- If indeed the hunter team is not yet fully organized as police claim, then another team is going after robbery suspects one by one.
A day after Jimmy Duarte was shot in front of his family's eatery in Pier 3, four more men were shot separately from Thursday night to Friday morning.
Allan delos Santos and Epifanio Olestrisimo, both 30, were shot in their sleep in Barangay Carreta, Cebu City, while unidentified persons walked up to Hector Montilla, 28 and Noel Arda, 38, and shot them dead.
Acting Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) Director Melvin Gayotin reiterated his earlier statements that killing robbers was not their job.
"Ang among trabaho kay arestohon, dili patyon," he said.
Interviewed by television news crews, relatives of those who were shot believe the police were behind the killings.
Since Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeņa's "hunter team" is not operating yet, a city councilor suspects the five suspected robbers' attackers were robbery victims.
Councilor Procopio Fernandez, chairman of the City Council's committee on police, believes the attacks against the suspected robbers were not operations led by the police.
"Personally, I don't think it's the work of the hunter team because the team has not even been activated yet. Maybe these are people who held grudges against the robbers," he told Sun.Star.
In his press conference last week, Osmeņa said it would take another week before the hunter team that he wants to create can operate against criminal elements in the city.
Details of the rules governing the team have yet to be made public.
Various groups or individuals have expressed support for the proposed team, including the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia, but called on the team to keep their operations within legal bounds.
Don't kill your targets, Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal appealed, but let them have their day in court.
Finished off
Arda was watching a game of billiards and carrying his two-year-old niece when an unidentified man approached him for no reason and shot him several times.
Arda dropped his two-year-old niece to the ground. She hit her head on the billiard table, but did not get shot.
Though wounded, Arda managed to run but the gunman chased him and finished him off.
He was brought to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC), but did not get there alive.
The gunman had asked Arda's neighbor Valentine Durano, 18, which of the men watching the game was Arda.
Responding members of the homicide team went to Durano's house, but he was not home.
He is being considered a suspect in the killing.
They also recovered a deformed slug.
Members of the Fuente Police Station could not say if Arda was involved in robbery incidents.
However, he served time at the Bagong Buhay Rehabilitation Center.
Carreta slayings
Six unidentified persons arrived at the PNB lot in Carreta at 1:30 a.m. last Friday onboard a white Tamaraw FX and a red Yamaha 50 motorcycle.
Both vehicles had no plate number.
All six were wearing cloth masks.
Delos Santos and his live-in partner Juliet Argiente, 25, were asleep when some men forcibly entered their house and shot delos Santos several times.
Jovencio Balansag, 31, also told homicide investigators that two of them armed persons approached Olestrisimo, who was sleeping on top of a wide bumper of a parked yellow jeep.
Both sustained multiple gunshot wounds on their bodies.
Members of the Regional Scene of the Crime Operations recovered four empty shells in delos Santos' room and six empty shells and a deformed slug around Olestrisimo's body.
The shells are believed to be those of a .45 pistol.
Both bodies were brought to the St. Francis Funeral Homes.
String of cases
Delos Santos, according to an intelligence officer of the Waterfront Police Station, has a number of robbery and snatching cases.
PO3 Vicente Espenido Jr. said though that sometimes, some of the cases do not prosper because victims take pity on him or agree to a settlement.
An intelligence officer of the Mabolo Police Station also said he has heard of the alleged involvement of Olestrisimo and Montilla in jeepney robberies, but the two have not yet been arrested.
Montilla, who worked as a taxi dispatcher, was sitting on a bench at Gate 3 of Pier 5 at 5:45 a.m. last Friday when an armed person wearing a black helmet suddenly approached on a black motorcycle and fired twice, hitting Montilla in the back.
Corporal Arche Guintara of the port police rushed Montilla to the Cebu City Medical Center but he did not make it to the hospital alive.
Last Wednesday night, two men on a motorcycle shot dead suspected pier area robber Jimmy Duarte, two days after Mayor Osmeņa gave a P20,000 reward for every robber "permanently disabled or neutralized." (MEA with LCR)
(December 27, 2004 issue)
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