Mandaluyong barangay chair shot dead inside billiards hall

Godofredo “Goody” Tolentino, chair of Barangay Poblacion, Mandaluyong City.

Published: 9:35 p.m., Oct. 9, 2017 | Updated: 11:48 p.m., Oct. 10, 2017

A barangay chair of Mandaluyong City who served as former aide of former mayor Benhur Abalos was shot dead at around 6 p.m. on Monday inside his own billiard hall in Barangay Poblacion.

Godofredo “Goody” Tolentino, 63, was shot at close range from behind by a lone gunman while he was watching a billiards game at his family-owned 4 Brothers Billiard on AT Reyes Street, only 50 meters away from the barangay hall and police outpost.

The barangay’s closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera showed the assailant casually walking near the crime scene while smoking a cigarette.

His cohort on a motorcycle then made a U-turn, stopped to meet and talk to the assailant prior the attack.

The cohort went back and forth as the assailant went inside the billiard hall.

The assailant in a black jacket and a cap was stout. Both suspects did not wear a mask, based on the CCTV footage.

A report reaching Chief Supt. Romulo Sapitula, Eastern Police District director, said the assailant then shot Tolentino thrice in the head and back.

The suspect then fired a shot to prevent people from following them, and fled with his cohort on a motorcycle toward Aglipay Street, the CCTV footage showed.

Tolentino was rushed to the Mandaluyong City Medical Center where he was declared dead on arrival.

Politics eyed

Chief Senior Supt. Joaquin Alva, chief of the Mandaluyong City Police Station, said they had already created “Taskforce Goody” to investigate the killing.

“Politics is one of the angles we are eyeing so far. We have no information connecting the incident to drugs,” Alva said.

Ma. Victoria, alias Nogie Pacheco, a street sweeper, said a week before Tolentino’s killing, she saw a white car with no plate number and a motorcycle casing the victim’s house separately for two consecutive days. The man inside the car looked like a goon, she said.

“I got nervous because that was the same car we saw on CCTV in a previous shooting in Poblacion,” she said.

At the wake on Tuesday at a mortuary near the San Felipe Neri Church, Tolentino’s wife Mercedita Tolentino said she was not aware that her husband had death threats.

No known enemy

“He had no known enemy. He was very soft-spoken. He despised illegal drugs,” she told reporters. “It’s probably envy, not drugs, as my husband is a politician. Alam mo na,” she added.

Tolentino previously worked as a village watchman in 1994, then became a close-in aide of former Mayor Benhur Abalos in 1998; head of the antibelching unit of the Mandaluyong City Hall chief in 2009 before he became the current barangay chair for four years, said Wilfredo Reyes, a former official of Barangay Poblacion.

Tolentino was supposed to run unopposed in this year’s barangay elections, he added.

He was also the incumbent vice president of the Association of Barangay Captains in Mandaluyong.

/pdi /atm