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Friday, February 10, 2006
Labor head's son slain in ambush
By Rene H. Martel
CEBU CITY -- Two men on a motorcycle shot dead the son of an Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corp. (ACMDC) labor leader while he was driving a passenger jeepney in Barangay Media Once, Toledo City last Wednesday.
Family members tagged the assailants as men of a rival labor leader, who survived an ambush in October last year following a confrontation inside the ACMDC compound days earlier.
Claudio Billones, 30, of Don Andres Soriano (DAS, formerly Lutopan), Toledo City died from a gunshot wound in the left portion of the forehead.
The bullet exited the top of his head.
The attack happened around 2:15 p.m. while Claudio was waiting for a passenger to disembark from the front seat.
Responding policemen recovered an empty .45 shell as well as strands of hair and slug fragments from the bonnet Claudio was wearing.
The police said they are tracking down two suspects whom Marcos, Claudio's father, said were men of Antonio Cuizon, leader of labor union Panaghi-usa sa Mamumuo sa Atlas (Pama).
Billones' Agricultural Atlas Unpaid Employees' Association Inc. and Pama are jostling for the right to haul scrap iron from the mine compound to be sold to pay the remainder of the laid-off workers' benefits.
In an interview, Marcos said Cuizon pointed guns and hit Claudio and four others with these while they were loading scrap iron last Oct. 5.
Cuizon allegedly also burned their makeshift huts.
Claudio led the filing of least six complaints, among them arson and robbery.
Toledo City Prosecutor's Office, in a joint resolution last Feb. 3, recommended the filing of an attempted homicide case, among others, against Cuizon, Marcos said.
Cuizon had also blamed Billones and his group for the Oct. 10 ambush last year in Gaway-gaway, Uling, Naga, Cebu as he was on way to Toledo City with his family.
Cuizon survived gunshots that blew off four fingers of his right hand, grazed his right forearm and left neck, and embedded a bullet in his left shoulder.
In an interview Thursday, SPO2 Castro Entoma of DAS police sub-station, quoting a witness, said the gunmen, riding a red Yamaha STX motorcycle, were already following the jeepney Claudio drove in Bawod, the barangay before Media Once.
When a passenger disembarked near an intersection in Media Once, the motorcycle accelerated and stopped right beside the driver's seat.
The motorcycle passenger, who was wearing a cloth mask, then fired at Claudio, who was caught off-guard because he was lighting a cigarette.
Entoma said the motorcycle driver was not wearing a mask, and the witness could readily identify him if he sees him again.
"The witness noticed that the motorcycle never tried to overtake," Entoma said.
Claudio was rushed to the Toledo City District Hospital and then to the Visayas Community Hospital in Cebu City. He died along the way.
Toledo City Police Chief Leodegardo Acebedo, however, said they already identified the suspects and they are tracking them down.
Despite what happened to his son, the eldest of 10 siblings, Marcos said they will not take the law into their own hands and will leave it to the authorities to give justice to Claudio's death.
Entoma said they have not established yet the motive for the attack, but they are not discounting the possibility that the ambush on Claudio could be an act of revenge. (Sun.Star Cebu)
(February 10, 2006 issue)
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