Isabela banker-journalist shot dead

ALICIA, ISABELA—An editor and columnist of a newspaper in this province was shot dead at 7:30 a.m. Friday, the latest in a spate of killings of journalists in the country, police said.

A man riding pillion on a motorcycle shot Johnson Pascual, editor in chief of Prime News published in Cauayan City, along the national highway in Barangay Rizaluna here, a police report said.

Johnson was driving a van from Alicia toward the Cauayan City, the report added, when the motorcycle sidled up to the van’s right side to get into position for the gun attack.

Pascual, 52, also a manager of the First Isabela Cooperative Bank (Ficobank) in Cauayan City, lost control of the vehicle which then plunged into a ravine, the report disclosed.

Chief Insp. Julio Go, Isabela police spokesperson, said Pascual was shot in the head and torso.

No motive was given for the attack and no arrests have been made.

Three weeks ago, Rufo Uy, manager of the Rural Bank of Angadanan, Isabela, was shot dead by motorcycle-riding men in front of his house in the town.

Pascual was the sixth journalist murdered this year across the nation and the 147th killed since 1986, said Nestor Burgos, head of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines.

Burgos said it was still too early to say if the murder was related to Pascual’s job as a journalist. AFP and Villamor Visaya Jr., Inquirer Northern Luzon