Iloilo cop charged with frustrated murder for slay try on another cop

ILOILO CITY— The police here have filed a frustrated murder complaint against a policeman tagged as the gunman in a botched assassination of another policemen accused of involvement in illegal drugs.

PO2 Melvin Mocorro has been placed under hospital arrest and is heavily guarded at the Iloilo Mission Hospital where he is confined with bullet wounds in the chest and leg.

He is suspected to be one of three motorcycle-riding gunmen who shot PO1 Dorben Acap on June 26 in Barangay Dulonan in Arevalo District here, according to Senior Insp. Mary Grace Borio, Arevalo police station chief.

Acap, who was driving his Honda sedan when the incident happened, was wounded in the shoulder. He managed to fire back at his assailants, hitting one of them believed to be Mocorro.

He was brought to The Medical City in Molo District and later identified Mocorro as the gunman through photographs.

Acap, who is assigned at the Regional Personnel Holding and Accounting Unit at Camp Martin Delgado in Iloilo City, is among the policemen investigated for alleged involvement in illegal drugs, an allegation that he has repeatedly denied.

Policemen from the Arevalo District police station were alerted when the Western Visayas Medical Center reported that a man with bullet wounds was brought to the hospital shortly after the attack on Acap.

Investigators said Mocorro told hospital personnel and policemen who initially questioned him that he was shot in Barangay Pakiad in Oton town, a few kilometers from where Acap was shot.

But the Oton police station issued a certificate that no shooting incident was reported in the town on that day and time, according to Borio.

Borio added that the footage from security cameras at the crime scene showed the gunman wearing the same clothes worn by Mocorro when he was brought to the hospital.

“He has been identified by the victim and we have (pieces) of circumstantial evidence,” Borio told the INQUIRER.

Mocorro has refused to issue further statements to investigators.

Borio said they have confirmed that Mocorro is currently assigned at the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) police office, but he filed a leave of absence from June 15 to 30.

Investigators are still have to determine why Moccoro, who was previously assigned in Western Visayas, is in Iloilo. /ee