Radioman survives gun attack

ILOILO CITY—Two unidentified motorcycle-riding men repeatedly shot and wounded a radio block timer in Iloilo Friday, police said.

Fernando “Kapid” Gabio suffered a bullet wound in the right thigh after he was shot three times in front of his house in Barangay Democracia in Jaro District here around 7 a.m., said PO2 Velmor Murcillo of the intelligence section of the Jaro police station.

Gabio, 62, said he was cleaning his car when the armed men shot him.

“I pulled out my gun but they fled,” Gabio told the Inquirer in a telephone interview from the Iloilo Mission Hospital where he was brought for treatment.

Murcillo said the assailants fled on a black Honda motorcycle. Investigators also recovered three .45-caliber shells after the shooting.

Gabio hosts block-time radio programs especially during election periods attacking or defending politicians. A block time is a paid time slot in radio stations whose hosts are usually employed by the buyer of the time slot.

Cohost

On Aug. 22, 2011, Niel “Lito” Jimena, Gabio’s cohost in a radio program at the Radyo Mo Nationwide (RMN) station in Iloilo City, was shot dead in E.B. Magalona town in Negros Occidental.

Jimena’s case remains unsolved but the Negros Occidental police earlier said they were eyeing Jimena’s work as a broadcaster and his involvement as an informant of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and the intelligence section of the Iloilo City Police Office as among the possible motives for the murder.

City police director Senior Supt. Marietto Valerio said investigators were still determining the identity of the assailants and the motive behind the attack.

He said they would look into the possible links between Jimena’s killing and the attack on Gabio.