INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MABALACAT CITY, Pampanga — A Chinese Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (Pogo) worker was killed Tuesday by a Chinese kidnap-for-ransom group, while another survived an abduction in separate locations in Porac town, Pampanga.
A report from the Pampanga police identified the survivor as Zhou Jie Hey, 30, a native of Guangdong, China, who currently resides at Hotel 101 in Pasay City.
The Porac municipal police received a call from a village watchman in Manuali, Porac about a man found lying on the ground with bullet wounds in the abdomen and lower part of the body.
A police team was dispatched to the area and rushed the victim to a hospital.
Porac chief of police Lieutenant Colonel Palmyra Guardaya said investigators got statements from the Chinese survivor through an interpreter.
“Through an interpreter, he (Zhou) said they were taken from Pasay and were promised jobs somewhere in Angeles City. But on their way here, the kidnappers called the victims’ respective families, asking for ransom. When we asked him to describe the other victims, one of them matched the body found along the bypass road,” she said in an interview over local television station CLTV36 on Tuesday afternoon.
Guardaya said they were relieved to have found Zhou alive.
“When we arrived at the hospital, he was hysterical, asking us to call his family in China and inform them about his condition. Luckily, he survived, despite suffering two gunshot wounds. He underwent a surgical operation a while ago,” Guardaya said.
Zhou told the police that he was with five other Chinese—four men and a woman—who were taken by the Chinese kidnap-for-ransom group from Pasay City. He said the other kidnapping victims might all be dead.
At past 8 a.m. on the same day, the Porac municipal police received another call from a concerned citizen who saw the body of a man on a grassy portion at the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway’s (SCTEx) access road in Mancatian village.
Responding policemen found that the body belonged to a still-unidentified Chinese man who died of gunshot wounds.
Porac Mayor Jaime Capil said he would ask the police to establish a checkpoint along the SCTEx access road at Mancatian to prevent similar incidents from happening.
On Oct. 23, the body of a Malaysian Pogo worker was found dumped at an irrigation canal in San Miguel village, San Simon, Pampanga. Its eyes were covered with a piece of cloth, was tied, and had bullet wounds.
The San Simon police established recently the victim’s identity – Jason Yap Chow Sheng, about 40 years old, from Negeri, Sembilan region in Malaysia.
Police theorized that the victim was also a victim of a kidnap-for-ransom syndicate preying on Pogo workers. INQ
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