Zambo university owner shot dead

Criminality continues to run circles around law enforcers under the Aquino administration as a top businessman in Zamboanga City was assassinated on Sunday in a mission carried out with impunity on a street in the city.

Businessman Arturo Eustaquio III, 69, was shot by two unidentified men on Maestra Vicente Street in Zamboanga City at about 1 p.m. Sunday.

Eustaquio and his family own the Universidad de Zamboanga and the Zamboanga Arturo Eustaquio College Hospital.

Senior Supt. Edwin de Ocampo, Zamboanga City police chief, said Eustaquio suffered at least five gunshot wounds.

Eustaquio died at the hospital that his family owned. According to police, he was leaving the family residence when he was attacked.

He was starting his motorcycle and about to leave when shot repeatedly. “He did not inform anyone where he was going,” said De Ocampo.

De Ocampo said the victim’s family refused to talk with authorities “but they assured us that they would issue a statement as soon as the old man is buried.”

In Kidapawan City, two land mine explosions missed government soldiers and civilians passing through a road in a remote village there.

Col. Leopoldo Galon, of the Eastern Mindanao Command, said the roadside land mines were remotely detonated as military vehicles loaded with soldiers and civilian vehicles were passing through in Barangay San Mateo in the city past

6 a.m.

In Maguindanao, a town mayor had disappeared after he was linked to a series of killings in the province carried out with the use of chainsaws.

Samer Uy, mayor of Datu Piang town, has been missing for months now and is believed to be in hiding after he was linked to the so-called chainsaw massacre in the province.

Outside Mindanao, crimes continue to run amuck. Businessmen are being killed in Metro Manila by hired assassins while teachers, traders and ordinary people are being kidnapped in lawless parts of Mindanao, particularly Basilan and Sulu.

The impunity with which crimes are committed, especially against members of media, continued under the Aquino administration, which has repeatedly promised during the campaign to be the antithesis of its predecessor, the administration of detained former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Thefts of cars continue without letup in parts of Metro Manila and stolen cars end up in the Visayas and Mindanao without police ever succeeding in arresting key leaders of syndicates that perpetrate these crimes.

Illegal gambling syndicates that run jueteng and other numbers rackets are still operating without fear of being detected by authorities that are in cahoots with them, prompting a top Church leader to express hopelessness that government would ever put its foot down against illegal gambling. Edwin Fernandez, Julie Alipala and Charlie Senase, Inquirer Mindanao