POLICE are checking phone call logs and text messages of slain businessman Antonio Favia Santos for clues on who shot him and why.
An hour before he was killed while driving in barangay Kalunasan, Cebu City, Santos was seen talking on his mobile phone while having lunch in the family-owned Villa Teresita resort in Talisay City.
Witnesses said Santos made about three calls in a span of 30 minutes.
Santos probably knew his assailant because he was a passenger in the victim’s Honda CRV where the shooting took place, said police investigators.
(When police tried to contact the dialed phone number, it could no longer be reached.)
Santos was driving from the Cebu City Jail when he was shot in sitio OPRRA in barangay Kalunasan.
Senior Insp. Jul Mohammad Jamiri, chief of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) Homicide Section, said they are extracting data from Santos’ mobile phone, which was dropped on the road near the crime scene.
Jamiri said that Santos’ family also provided several names to the investigators when they visited the victim’s vigil wake in St. Peter’s Funeral Homes in Imus Street, Cebu City.
Jamiri said police initially had 26 names of persons which was reduced to five, whom they will be inviting for questioning.
Jamiri said that of the five, “one may have a personal grudge, two others have a connection to his operation in illegal gambling. The fourth is said to be his right hand who accompanied him most of the time, and the last one was the person who knew his activities.”
He said two were contacted already. Jamiri said one of them is from Manila while the rest are from Cebu.
“We’ll give them all the leeway so they could shed light in the investigation,” he said.
Although investigators are not discounting other motives of the crime, they consider the victim’s alleged involvement in illegal gambling as the prime motive.
Whatever the motive, the common denominator, Jamiri said, is money.
“Kwarta gyud and rason,” (Money is the reason), Jamiri said.
A total of P73,000 cash in P500 and P1,000 bills was left untouched in Santos’ pockets by the gunman.
Nevertheless, police said robbery could still be a motive of the slaying.
Santos’ father, Pablito, showed up at the police station to talk to investigators.
Jamiri said the elder Santos admitted that Antonio was previously involved in illegal gambling like masiao and swertres from 1997 to 2007, but said that was in the past.
The elder Santos refused to comment on his son’s murder when asked by reporters.
Police investigators are also puzzled why Santos went to the Cebu City Jail Tuesday and returned on Wednesday, which is not a visitors day for inmates.
Jamiri said police will coordinate with the warden, Supt. Johnson Calub, about this.
Calub said that Santos visited one inmate, a certain “Bobong” of Gingoog City, Misamis Oriental, who was transferred to Cebu last March 2010.
The inmate is facing robbery, homicide and murder charges in Mindanao.
The venue of the trial of these cases was transferred to Cebu, but Calub wouldn’t elaborate.
After making several calls around 12 noon last Wednesday, Santos hurriedly left the family-owned resort.
He was shot dead around 1:45 p.m. while driving up a hilly road in OPPRA, barangay Kalunasan.
In Villa Teresita in barangay Biasong, Talisay City, the resort was open but there was a public advisory that they won’t cater to overnight guests and there would be no disco. The same advisory said that they will be closed on April 23-24.
Talisay police said they will just coordinate with the homicide section of CCPO and not conduct their own inquiry. /with reports from Correspondent Gabriel Bonjoc