A SUSPECTED drug pusher in Mandaue City was shot dead yesterday after he allegedly tried to fire at members of the Mandaue City Police Office-Investigation and Detective Management Branch (IDMB) in Sitio Toril, Barangay Tingub.
A drug suspect from Barangay San Jose in Cebu City also suffered the same fate after he, too, allegedly shot at operatives during a buy-bust.
In the first incident, the fatality was identified as Amelito Mahinay.
Insp. Zenaido Sanchez of IDMB said they received a call from a concerned citizen that an armed person was spotted in the area past 11 a.m.
When they got there, Mahinay allegedly grabbed his firearm to shoot at them, prompting the responding team to fire at Mahinay.
Police recovered a .38 revolver from Mahinay.
Senior Insp. Janelito Marquez, chief of Mandaue Police Station 4, said Mahinay was in their watch list of drug personalities.
Murder convict
He said Mahinay, who was convicted for murder, had a pending case for frustrated homicide and was a suspect of several robbery incidents.
In Cebu City, Senior Insp. Percival Miasco, chief of the Talamban Police Station, said they were only retaliating when suspect Ed Mayol Borces, 52, was killed during a buy-bust in Barangay San Jose.
“He fired at us and nearly hit us. It’s dangerous because we were not wearing vests,” Miasco said in Cebuano.
Borces was in the top 10 list of the station’s most wanted drug personalities. He was allegedly a level 2 drug pusher.
According to Miasco, it was steep climb to Borces’s hideout and there were lookouts everywhere.
“He was really difficult to catch because of the area,” he said in Cebuano.
Miasco denied that Borces was a victim of a “rubout.”
The suspect’s daughter Jed Umacob, 25, said her father’s neighbors heard him plead for his life before police shot him.
She said her older brother told her their father had been arrested in their house, which is located in a steep area.
Umacob said police did not allow anyone to see her father, even his immediate family.
She said it was her father’s neighbors who told them he had been shot by police.
She said they were aware that her father was selling illegal drugs.
“But he was not a big-timer. He was imprisoned in 2005,” she said in Cebuano.
Umacob said she didn’t know her father was still involved in the illegal drug trade. “He was already raising chickens, pigs and goats for his livelihood,” she said in Cebuano.
“Unarmed”
In a separate interview, her 15-year-old brother told told Sun.Star Cebu that their father was unarmed when police arrested him.
“He didn’t own a gun because he was afraid to use it,” he said in Cebuano.
He said their father had been handcuffed before he was shot.
He also said their father was planning to surrender a day before the operation.
Senior Supt. Rey Lyndon Lawas, deputy regional director for operations, urged relatives of the suspects to file a complaint.
But Umacob said they won’t press charges.
“Wala man siguro ta’y dag-anan (We don’t have a chance),” she said.
Recovered from the scene were a .38 revolver, P50,000 worth of shabu and P3,800 in cash believed to be drug proceeds. Euchrissa Theresa Ladrera, UP Cebu Intern