6 killed in massacre at home of Pampanga fish trader

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga – Six persons were killed and another critically wounded in a massacre during what also appeared to be a botched robbery attempt at the home of a bangus or milkfish trader, police said Saturday.

Senior Superintendent Oscar Albayalde said the killings on Friday at No. 19 Molave Street  in the L&S Subdivision at the boundary of San Fernando and Angeles cities left dead the wife and son of bangus trader Nicolas Edejer.

Edejer, 42, was unconscious and confined in a hospital, Albayalde said.

Two female househelp and two male assistants of the fish trader were among those killed.  All of them were shot in the head, Albayalde said, citing initial findings of investigators who finished documenting the crime scene at 2:30 a.m. Saturday.

The perpetrators spared Edejer’s nine-year-old son, and a relative of Edejer has taken took custody of the boy.

Police identified the fatalities as Edejer’s wife Corazon  47;  son Kenneth, 19; a woman identified only as Kay-Kay, 27; stay-in maid Teresita Lansangan Camiling, 40; and Edejer’s assistants Nelson Dominico y Hidalgo, 17, and Benigno Villanueva Jr., 52.

Albayalde said the killers managed to remove a steel safe from the second floor of one of two houses in the compound. They managed to bring it down to the garden but failed to open it and abandoned it there. Police said the safe was believed to be filled with cash because the trader delivered bangus daily to the Pampang market in Angeles City.

That type of safe needed more than three persons to carry it, Albayalde said.

Albayalde said investigators estimated that the crime was carried out between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. and was reported to the police past 6 p.m.

The killers took the closed-circuitcamera of the main house including the tape that might have recorded the killings, Albayalde said. The getaway vehicle the killers used, a pick up, is owned by Edejer.

Apparently, the perpetrators did not gather the victims in a single location in any of the two houses. The women were found in the master bedroom, living room and garden hut. The men were found dead in separate rooms on the second floor of the two houses that are connected by a spiral staircase.

Albayalde said he created Task Group Edejer, which has been tracking down leads since Friday night.

Originally posted at 1:51 p.m.