2 teeners shot dead in Quezon City
By Marlon Ramos
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 16:11:00 01/20/2008
MANILA, Philippines--Two young men, aged 16 and 18, were shot dead by two motorcycle-riding men in Barangay Batasan Hills, Quezon City on Sunday, just a few minutes after they walked out from a police jail.
Noriel Grefal, 18, died instantly from a gunshot wound in the head while his companion, Usman "Amboy" Bonifacio, died while being treated at a hospital for multiple bullet wounds in the body.
PO2 Randy Bantillo, investigator of the homicide division of the Quezon City Police District (QCPD), said the two were walking along the IBP Road in Barangay Batasan Hills at around 9 a.m. when two men on a motorcycle approached them.
Bantillo said the still-unidentified gunman quickly alighted from the motorcycle and without saying a word, shot Grefal in the head at close range.
The gunman then turned to Bonifacio who tried to run for safety.
Grefal's common-law wife, Ina Balatbat, who was with the victims when the shooting happened, said she could not remember the face of the gunman who, she said, was wearing a baseball cap and sunglass.
The driver of the motorcycle, meanwhile, had a helmet on his head, she said.
Balatbat, 17, said the shooting happened barely 30 minutes after she fetched Grefal from the detention center of the QCPD Station 6.
The victims, she said, were picked up by policemen for vagrancy along Commonwealth Avenue at around 1 a.m. Saturday.
"My husband did not have any enemies. I really don't know why they killed him," Balatbat, who is three months pregnant, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, parent company of INQUIRER.net, in Filipino.
"Paano na kami ng magiging anak namin [How will I and my child live]?" she said in between sobs.
Before he was arrested, Balatbat said her live-in partner told her that he would just go to a dance party along with his friends.
She said Grefal had no other criminal record.
She then hinted that policemen who arrested the victims could be responsible for the killings.
Balatbat recalled that before Grefal was released from jail, members of the QCPD Station 6 asked him to do several chores.
She said they likewise saw a policeman who allegedly talked with somebody on the mobile phone before the victims were allowed to go.
"Masama po ang tingin sa amin nung pulis. Parang talagang tinatandaan ang mga mukha namin at sinasabi dun sa kausap niya sa cell phone [The policeman was staring at us. He seemed to be remembering our faces and telling somebody over the phone how we looked like]," she said.
But Bantillo said they were looking at old grudge as the motive in the attack.
He said Bonifacio, an alleged member of the Sputnik Gang, was recently freed from a rehabilitation center for young offenders after he was arrested for murder.
"What is evident here is that the assailants waited for the victims. Maybe they had information that the two had been arrested and was about to be released," he said.
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