Newly elected barangay chair gunned down in Pagadian City
PAGADIAN CITY, Zamboanga del Sur — A newly elected barangay chairperson in Lapedian village in this city was gunned down about 6:30 Wednesday, outside his house.
Rofoldo Dacol, who had yet to take his oath of office as the new chairperson of Barangay Lapedian, was about to park the barangay-owned tricycle earlier used to transport a patient, when an unidentified gunman approached and shot him, Lieutenant Colonel Rex Perocho, chief of the Zamboanga del Sur Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, said.
Lory Carillo, Dacol’s relative, said they were inside the house preparing dinner a few meters away, when they heard a gunshot and the victim’s cry for help.
They immediately rushed the bloodied Dacol to the infirmary hospital in Barangay Danlugan and later to the Aisah Hospital, but the attending physician declared him dead.
Dacol served as a barangay councilor when he decided to run and won the barangay chair’s seat in the recent barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections.
His son Fraynald, a newly elected SK kagawad, said his father had received death threats before the elections, but they dismissed the information.
Dacol’s wife, Ruth, at the time of the shooting, was already washing her husband’s supposed attire for his oath-taking Thursday afternoon at the Pagadian City Commercial Center.
City Mayor Samuel Co condemned the killing.
Co, who openly supported Dacol, said he was aware of the victim’s struggle as a challenger to the incumbent during the recently concluded barangay and SK elections.
He said the motive for the attack had yet to be determined but “with Dacol being known as a good man… we only see politics as the possible motive,” said Co.
Among the city’s 54 barangays, only Lapedian was considered an area of concern by the Commission on Elections in the last elections, with reports of harassments from the two opposing parties, prompting the city to request a security detachment in the area with the composite team from both military and the local police.
But a few days after the successful polls, the composite security teams were pulled out from the area to another assignment, 53rd Infantry Battalion Commander Lieutenant Colonel Terence Ylanan said.
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