Former prosecutor Mary Ann Castro shot dead

CEBU. Former Cebu City assistant prosecutor Mary Ann Castro was shot dead Thursday, January 17, 2019, while driving her yellow car along Escario St., Cebu City. (Photo by Alan Tangcawan)
CEBU. Former Cebu City assistant prosecutor Mary Ann Castro was shot dead Thursday, January 17, 2019, while driving her yellow car along Escario St., Cebu City. (Photo by Alan Tangcawan)

(UPDATED) - Former Cebu City assistant prosecutor Mary Ann Castro was shot dead by an unidentified man on a motorcycle at 9:53 p.m. Thursday, January 17, along Escario St., Cebu City.

In a Facebook Live report by Superbalita Cebu, Police Senior Inspector Edward Sanchez, head of Police Station 2 of the Cebu City Police Office, identified Castro through the driver's license in her wallet.

A spot report from Police Station 2 said Castro, 49, was driving a yellow Nissan Juke car towards the Capitol area from the Cebu Business Park when she was shot.

The report said the gunman drove his motorcycle close to the driver's side of Castro's car and shot her. Castro sustained a single gunshot wound to her neck. The bullet went through and came out of her right jaw.

Her car swerved to the opposite lane and came to a stop when it struck the perimeter fence of a construction site.

Sanchez told SunStar that they were looking into the cases handled by Castro and her alleged past relationship with slain police officer SPO2 Adonis Dumpit.

Dumpit, a former close-in aide of Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, was killed by National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and police operatives in Tagbilaran City, Bohol on June 27, 2018.

Read: Dumpit killed in Tagbilaran 'drug bust'



Castro's two children and other relatives arrived at the crime scene past 11 p.m. Thursday, while Scene of the Crime Operatives (Soco) were processing the evidence.

One of the relatives was allowed inside the police cordon at about 11:45 p.m. to identify Castro's personal belongings. Soco operatives removed from Castro's car a handbag, a pair of shoes, a folder, a paper bag and other items.

Castro was an assistant prosecutor at the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor for 18 years. She resigned on April 1, 2017 after she was suspended twice.

Read: 'I'm moving on, not happy there'

The prosecutor had been embroiled in several controversies over various alleged infractions in office.

The Supreme Court (SC) suspended Castro for six months and a day in June 2015 for wielding “excessive influence” when she asked the police to help her brother who complained about a defective vehicle he bought in 2001.

The SC 2nd Division affirmed the ruling of the Court of Appeals, which found Castro guilty of using her influence to use the Special Weapons and Tactics (Swat) team “for a personal matter.”

Castro was again suspended in 2016. The SC's Third Division suspended Castro for six months for filing separate petitions for annulment of marriage in two trial courts in Cebu in 2000.

The SC lifted Castro's suspension and reinstated her to the practice of law effective January 2017.

In March 2016, while serving her suspension imposed by the Supreme Court in 2015, she began work as acting chief of the Talisay City Legal Office.

Castro’s romantic life was fodder for the tabloids.

In August 2002, Cherry Basalo Augusto filed an administrative complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas for immorality and grave misconduct against Castro for having an extra-marital affair with her husband, Zandro Augusto.

Cherry had seen the pair in a motel in Mandaue City on Aug. 11, 2002.

But two months later, on Oct. 3, Cherry was shot in the head allegedly by PO1 Clementino Dulguime Jr., who subsequently shot himself with the same gun.

Two months later, with Zandro now a widower and Castro’s marriage annulled, and rumors of their alleged relationship refusing to die, Castro announced she “must have been born” for the 30-year-old businessman. They appeared at a restaurant in Barangay Busay, Cebu City on their “first date” on Dec. 3.

But their relationship fizzled out, and on Aug. 18, 2015, Castro, then 45, married Leodegreco “Greco” Sanchez, 38, son of the late Cebu vice governor Greg Sanchez, in Muslim rites a day after Sanchez was released from a drug rehabilitation center. They separated two months later. (SunStar Philippines from reports of Johanna Marie Bajenting and Alan Tangcawan)

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