An overseas Filipino worker was killed by two suspected robbers who ended up dead in a shoot-out with the police in Taguig City Friday morning.
Gerry Pano, 48, was shot dead in front of a Petron gas station along M.L. Quezon Avenue in Lower Bicutan at around 7 a.m. The two suspects, who have yet to be identified, were shot by police as they gave chase.
Taguig City Police chief Tomas Apolinario said the two suspects apparently waited for Pano, who was living with his brother in the area.
“The two approached Pano when he was about to leave his house, and then they shot him. Maybe he tried to fight back,” Apolinario said.
A bystander was also injured by a stray bullet and is now recovering at Ospital ng Makati.
Capt. Ray Villoria, chief of the Police Community Precinct 3 in Lower Bicutan, said that after shooting the victim, the two suspects fled on a jeepney.
“However, a concerned citizen on a motorcycle saw the incident and rushed to the police outpost at the corner of M.L. Quezon and Gen. Santos Streets to report the crime,” he said.
When the two suspects got off the jeep, PO1 Paolo Garcia and PO1 Joseph Christian Marcial immediately gave chase.
One of the suspects was shot dead in an alley. The other climbed a rooftop and found a hole in the bathroom to enter a house where he was cornered and shot by the police, Villoria said.
Clemen Apolonio, 25, who rents a room in the house together with his wife and two kids, said the suspect knocked loudly on the roof asking to be let in.
“When I heard the knocking, I thought it was one of the other boarders, so I dismissed it, until the police came and the shooting started. He could have entered the house through a gap between one of the walls of the bathroom and the roof,” he said.
“The initial motive we see here is robbery, especially because the victim recently came home from Canada. However, nothing was apparently taken from the victim,” he added.
This is the third major crime that has happened in Taguig this week. On Tuesday, a heartbroken lover shot his live-in partner, her mother and two brothers after she broke up with him. The partner sustained severe injuries, while the mother and the brothers were killed in the incident.
On Wednesday, two policemen and two civilians were killed while another police officer and nine other civilians were injured in the explosion of an 81-millimeter mortar, which exploded in an ironworks shop where the three policemen tried to defuse it.
Taguig City Mayor Lani Cayetano, however, assured residents that the police are on the job.
Cayetano said these were isolated incidents and that the city government would continue to keep their streets safe and assist victims of crimes.