Cebu attack adds to list of slain prosecutors

‘STRONG-WILLED LADY’ SILENCED Crime scene investigators examine the car Masbate City Assistant Prosecutor Mary Ann Castro was driving when she was shot and killed Thursday night on Escario Street in Barangay Kamputhaw, Cebu City. —NESTLE SEMILLA/JUNJIE MENDOZA

CEBU CITY—The police have formed a special investigation task group to quickly resolve the killing of Masbate City Assistant Prosecutor Mary Ann Castro, who had also served Cebu for nearly two decades.

City police chief Senior Supt. Royina Garma on Friday said she was mobilizing all available resources and directed the task group “to dig deeper into this case” and probe all possible angles, including personal grudge and illegal drugs, in the Thursday night attack on Castro.

Castro, 51, is the 10th state prosecutor killed since President Duterte took office in 2016.

Lawyer pal earlier killed

She was a close friend of slain lawyer Jonnah John Ungab who was gunned down by unknown assailants also in Cebu in February last year.

Ungab represented confessed drug lord Rolando “Kerwin” Espinosa Jr. whose father, Albuera Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr., was killed by the police inside a Leyte jail in 2016.

“We are now doing a background check on Castro,” said Garma.

Castro had just left Ayala Center and was alone in a yellow Nissan Juke, driving along Escario Street in Barangay Kamputhaw at 9:50 p.m. on Thursday when she was shot through her car window.

“We received a report that there was only a lone gunman. But we also received other information that there were at least two or three,” Garma added.

Investigators said witnesses heard five gunshots and then saw Castro’s car swerve across the street and smash into a galvanized iron sheet fence of a construction site.

The Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) Cebu chapter condemned the killing and called on the authorities to give justice to the state lawyer.

‘A norm in Cebu’

“This act seems to be a norm in Cebu, is unjust, disrespectful and inhumane. Justice cannot be attained by another act of injustice,” said Mundlyn Misal-Martin, president of the IBP chapter.

“Killing another person is not the resolution of a problem. Never can it be and never will it be,” she added.

Martin urged law enforcers “to look at all angles and find the real culprit.”

Nine other state prosecutors, including two women, have been killed in separate attacks around the country under the Duterte administration.

Martin said Castro was one of the respected female lawyers in Cebu whom she described as a “strong-willed lady” who was “not afraid to speak her mind.”

Controversy, suspensions

“She is also a good friend to many. She is simply one of the few who makes women in this profession significant and beautiful,” she said.

Castro, who served as assistant city prosecutor in Cebu for close to 20 years before her transfer to Masbate last year, drew controversy when she married Greco Sanchez, a son of the late Cebu Vice Gov. Gregorio Sanchez, in Muslim rites and for the three times she was suspended for various offenses.

In June 2015, the Supreme Court suspended Castro for six months for her “excessive influence” when she asked the police to help her brother who complained about a defective vehicle he bought in 2001.

The high court again suspended her for another six months in July 2016 for violating the “nonforum shopping” rule in filing separate petitions for annulment of marriage in two courts in Cebu in 2000.

Voided marriage

A 90-day suspension was slapped on her by the Department of Justice the following year in connection with administrative charges arising from her conflict with some members of the family of the late vice governor.

Her husband’s sister, Cebu Provincial Board Member Grecilda Sanchez-Zaballero, had accused her of “notorious undesirability, dishonest and immoral or deceitful conduct, grave abuse of authority, grave misconduct and conduct grossly prejudicial to the best interest of the service.”

Last December, her August 2015  marriage to Sanchez was voided by Judge Samsoden Mustapha of the Sharia Circuit Court in Pagadian City after the solemnizing officer, Imam Najeeb Razul, claimed there was fraud and misrepresentation in their union.

Castro and Sanchez separated about four months after they were married and she sued him and his partner for concubinage.

Attacks since 2016

Two other female prosecutors have been killed in separate attacks since 2016.

One of them, Assistant Special Prosecutor Madonna Joy Ednaco-Tanyag, who was five months pregnant, was stabbed three times in a robbery last year in Quezon City.

Another, Rizal Provincial Prosecutor Maria Ronatay, was shot by unknown assailants on July 18, 2017, as she was driving on Ortigas Avenue Extension in Taytay, Rizal.

Seven other government prosecutors were killed by unknown assailants, while another survived an ambush. —WITH A REPORT FROM INQUIRER RESEARCH