Mystery surrounds abduction, release of power utility technician

KIDAPAWAN CITY—Mystery surrounded the abduction and release of a field technician of a power utility in the town of Don Carlos, Bukidnon province.

Kier Sedillo, employee of the Cotabato Electric Cooperative (Cotelco), was fixing solar home panels at a remote village of Arakan town, Cotabato province on Monday (Feb. 8) when he was taken by unidentified gunmen.

Before his captors took him, Sedillo was able to send a text message to his supervisor pleading for help.

“Sir, help me,” he said in a text message sent to Enteng Baguio, his immediate supervisor. “I’m being fetched by armed men, I don’t know where they are bringing me,” said his text message, written in Bisaya, that Baguio received at 1:46 p.m. on Monday.

On Wednesday night (Feb. 10), however, Sedillo was suddenly left by his captors in Don Carlos town after two nights of hiking.

Already very weak and tired, Sedillo was finally reunited with his family at 9 p.m. on Wednesday after he was rescued by the Kabacan police along the highway of Bukidnon, said engineer Godofredo Homez, Cotelco general manager.

Sedillo said he was not given enough food and water in the last two days during their long hike as they traversed the mountains that he thought must be the border of Cotabato and Bukidnon province. He said he was very tired after two nights of running and keeping pace with his captors.

“He was blindfolded and hand-tied when the armed men abandoned him,” Homez said.

Mayor Herlo Guzman, of Kabacan town, Cotabato province, said that after Sedillo was taken at the village of Kabalantian, the armed men kept on walking from the village of Napalico, also in Arakan, passing through the difficult mountainous terrain believed to be part of the mountain range along the boundary of Cotabato province and Bukidnon.

Sedillo said he was not given enough food and even water to drink all throughout the long walk until they reached Don Carlos where he was abandoned.

“Sensing that the armed men were no longer around, he crawled until he was able to untie his hand and remove the blindfold,” Mayor Guzman told reporters in Kidapawan City.

Sedillo said he tried to ask for help from residents near the highway but no one wanted to help him or even gave him water to drink in the first houses he went to.

He continued to the other houses until someone helped him call his wife.

Sedilio is now confined at the hospital in Kabacan town due to severe dehydration.

Police in both Arakan and Kabacan cannot ascertain the identity of the armed men who snatched Sedillo, saying an investigation is ongoing.

TSB