Pasay barangay chairman in hiding after attack on man playing pool
Days after he reportedly shot and wounded a man playing pool on Leveriza Street in Pasay City, a barangay (village) captain in the area has gone missing.
Investigators recently charged Barangay 34 chairman Dionisio Nobleza with frustrated homicide before the City Prosecutor’s Office for last week’s shooting of Brian Sy, 30.
Sy, who is recovering at a nearby hospital, said it all started after he placed a pool table he purchased recently in front of a friend’s house.
“I sought permission to have the table set up there. The owner of the house, a close friend of mine, even played with us,” he said in an interview.
Confrontation
Apparently, this caught the ire of Nobleza who showed up one day, seemingly drunk, and approached Sy after he found out who the owner of the pool table was.
“He cocked his gun, pointed it at me and asked, ‘Do you want me to fire this?’” Sy said.
The succeeding events were a blur for Sy, who is still recovering from his injuries. All that he could remember was that he heard two gunshots.
The first one went through his abdomen. It did not pierce any vital organ but the second hit his left femur and shattered the bone. Sy said doctors told him he might need six months to a year to recover fully.
In an interview on Friday, the victim said he was to be transferred to an orthopedic hospital where surgeons would repair his broken bone.
Witnesses, meanwhile, told the police that after Nobleza threatened Sy with a gun, the latter told him to “go ahead and shoot.”
“Whenever he drank alcohol, he’d go on patrol with his gun on display,” Sy said. “He even threatened two pedicab drivers with his gun before he shot me.”
Empty house
No one was home when the Inquirer paid a visit on Nobleza’s house in an alley at Barangay 34. The doors were chained and padlocked and no one had come home since last Monday, according to neighbors.
Sought for comment, two barangay officials agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity out of fear that they might get dragged into the issue.
Both the officials said Nobleza indeed was missing but had communicated to them through text messages.
“He has not yet shown himself since the shooting,” one of the officials said.
Disbelief
“I’ve known him for a long time and I can’t believe he did that,” another official said, echoing the sentiment of most residents when the Inquirer asked for directions to Nobleza’s house.
The first official insisted that Nobleza’s gun was covered by a license.
Sy, meanwhile, claimed that the gun had been issued by the local government after several barangay chairmen were attacked and killed after the last local elections.
