7 hurt in shooting incident in Leyte town

TACLOBAN CITY –– Unidentified men shot seven people, two of them children, while they were aboard a vehicle in Jaro town in Leyte about 6 p.m. on Sunday.

Two of the victims, Leopoldo Po, 44, and a businessman, and his wife Ailen, 40 are in critical conditions after they were hit on their heads, said Captain Arnel Saregumba, police chief of Jaro town.

The other victims, Estrella Geraldo, 62, and a village chairwoman of San Pedro, Tunga town, also in Leyte, and Rachel Cuña, 27, were hit at the lower back of their bodies but are now in stable conditions.

Geraldo’s husband, Wilfredo, 62, and Cuña’s children, Estefanie, 6, and Sheena, 4, were unharmed.

Saregumba, in a phone interview, said the victims, aboard a Suzuki Ertiga, were heading to Tacloban City from their village of San Pedro, Tunga town when the assailants fired at them.

Some residents of the village, where the incident happened, brought the victims to the Divine Word Hospital in Tacloban City.

Saregumba said they had yet to identify the perpetrators and the motive behind the shooting.

“We are still conducting our probe on the incident,” he said.

Recovered from the crime scene were two deformed fired cartridge cases. These were turned over to the regional police headquarters for ballistic examination. /lzb