CRIME SCENE A policeman approaches the car of lawyer Karen Quiñanola-Gonzales where she and her son were shot and wounded by still unidentified men on Hernan Cortes Street in Barangay Tipo, Mandaue City, on Thursday night. PHOTO COURTESY OF ATTY. ERWIN ROMMEL HEYROSA
CEBU CITY — The Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) in Cebu City has offered a P50,000 reward for information that will lead to the arrest of the perpetrators who shot and wounded a female lawyer and her 19-year-old son on Thursday night.
The police have yet to determine the motive in the attack on lawyer Karen Quiñanola Gonzales, 43, a department manager at the Cebu Port Authority (CPA), and her son Jeremy Keith, 19, as they were heading home at 9:20 p.m.in Mandaue City.
Police Lt. Col. Franc Oriol, Mandaue City police deputy director for operations, said the attack could have been motivated by personal grudge; related to her work at the CPA, which manages all seaports in Cebu; or by any of the court cases she currently handle.
“We could not confirm yet which of these angles should we focus on because everything is under investigation for now,” he said in a phone interview on Friday.
Gonzales, the manager of the CPA’s business marketing and development department, was driving home with her son on a Honda sedan when ambushed by two men on board a motorcycle along Hernan Cortes Street in Barangay Tipolo, Mandaue.
She suffered a bullet wound in the neck while her son, who was seated at the front passenger seat, was hit in the back. Both are now undergoing treatment in an undisclosed hospital.
Oriol said they were gathering footage from closed-circuit television cameras starting from Gonzales’ workplace to the area where the shooting happened to find leads. “We are also coordinating with the lawyer’s family and coworkers to pinpoint the motive of the ambush,” he added.
Shocked, distressed
Mayor Jonas Cortes, in a statement on Friday, said he was closely monitoring the police investigation, stressing that he could not allow “violence and lawlessness to run rampant in Mandaue City.”
“We are a peaceful city and we intend to keep it that way,” said the mayor in a social media post. The CPA, in a statement on Friday, denounced the attack and called on authorities to conduct a “swift and transparent investigation and bring the perpetrators to answer for their crimes to the fullest extent of the law.”
“The CPA and the whole Cebu port community are both shocked and distressed to learn about the unfortunate shooting of our beloved CPA official and her teenage son,” it said.
The IBP-Cebu City chapter decried the attack and offered a P50,000 cash reward to anyone who could give information that would lead to the arrest of the gunmen and the mastermind.
“September is the rule of law month. But today has left us in utter shock and disbelief, as there is yet again, another attack against a member of the legal profession,” the lawyer’s group said in a statement.
“We should not allow shooting incidents to be a common fare in the news. The usual statement denouncing or condemning an attack done to any person, after the initial dismay of learning of the senseless harm done, will not cut it,” it added.
The IBP said members of its security committee will actively take part in the investigation by law enforcement authorities.
“We call on all law-abiding, peace loving, concerned and responsible citizens to help us find and identify the perpetrator/s of this senseless crime,” it said.
The Free Legal Assistant Group-Cebu also condemned the shooting of one of its members.
“We pray that law enforcement agencies will work hard to investigate the incident and arrest the perpetrators,” said lawyer Magdalena Lepiten, Flag-Cebu chair, in a statement.
“We, likewise, denounce the continued attack against human rights workers, members of the clergy and ordinary citizens. Extrajudicial killings that flourished under the Duterte administration continue unchecked under Marcos Jr.’s rule,” she added.