POLICE in Cebu City have asked the Cebu City Jail for help as one of the arrested hitmen revealed that he was taking orders from someone inside the jail in exchange for P50,000.
The arrested hitman, John Bryan Fernandez, named a drug personality inside the Cebu City Jail as the person behind the “kill orders,” but police could not give the name pending investigation.
Fernandez said he was responsible for three shooting incidents in Cebu City, the latest of which was the killing of a vendor at the cemetery in Barangay Carreta.
Theresa Zuniega, 43, a tombstone maker, was shot dead outside the cemetery on May 15, 2023.
Fernandez told police that the drug personality inside the Cebu City Jail contacts a middleman, also a drug personality from Lapu-Lapu City, who then gives him orders to kill. The middleman, he added, has already been arrested by police.
Police Colonel Ireneo Dalogdog, chief of the Cebu City Police Office, said that the names provided by Fernandez have already been subjects of investigation by the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology.
Dalogdog said Fernandez had been operating not just in Cebu City, but also in neighboring towns and cities.
He said Fernandez also admitted that the person he killed in Barangay Inayawan had owed the drug personality who remained in jail a kilo of shabu. The target failed to pay the illegal drugs, thus the order to kill him.
“Ang operation niya dili lang sa Cebu City kay mapansin nato naa na puy shooting incident nga naa sa outside Cebu City, pero kung tan-awon nimo ang background, more on related gihapon sa illegal drugs,” said Dalogdog.
(He operates not just in Cebu City because there were also similar shooting incidents outside Cebu City, but those were also illegal drug-related.)
The police said they want to see the persons deprived of liberty no longer allowed to use cellphones in order to stop the illegal businesses of drug personalities inside the jails. (AYB/LMY)