Ex-cop wanted for death of colleague

The police have started looking for a former colleague who was tagged as the gunman in last week’s killing of a member of the Philippine National Police Highway Patrol Group in Sta. Cruz, Manila.

Manila Police District (MPD) homicide section chief Senior Inspector Joselito de Ocampo said that Rommel Fortuno, a police officer 3 assigned with the Caloocan police who was later dismissed from the service, has gone into hiding after he reportedly killed 45-year-old Senior Police Officer 1 Rodrigo Cortez Jr., a resident of Gerona Street in Manila’s Tondo district.

The victim was shot dead on Thursday last week as he was walking on M. Natividad Street. Homicide investigators believed that Fortuno’s jealousy triggered the attack since Cortez’s girlfriend was his former lover.

“We found Cortez’s girlfriend and she identified Fortuno as the gunman. She claimed she saw him shooting Cortez and she escaped out of fear that he might kill her too,” De Ocampo told the Inquirer.—Jeannette I. Andrade