Gun instructor shot dead

In the end, a part-time gun instructor’s familiarity with every type and caliber of firearms proved useless after four men barged into his house in Barangay (village) Talipapa, Caloocan City, before dawn Monday and shot him dead.

Inspector Jose Hizon, chief of the Northern Police District’s investigation unit, identified the victim as 42-year-old Jose Martinez Jr., a financial consultant and gun enthusiast who, in his spare time, taught policemen at Camp Crame how to handle their firearms.

While the motive for the killing has yet to be determined, police investigators were looking into the possibility that it may have something to do with his work as a financial consultant.

This was after they found this message written in spray paint in the dining room: “Hayop ka Jojie stapador (Jojie, you low-life swindler).”

However, the police said they did not know if the Jojie mentioned in the message was Martinez himself.

They added that the victim’s relatives also refused to comment when they were asked about the matter.

Martinez’s death was reported to the police by his live-in partner, Maricel Retita, who said she was in an adjacent room with her 5-year-old child in the couple’s house at GSIS Hills Subdivision when she heard three shots ring out.

She added that immediately after, someone knocked on the door of her room. “When she opened her door slightly, she saw [several] men… She shut the door and locked it immediately,” Hizon said.

Retita told the police that the men did not force their way inside her room. When she looked out of the window, she saw them leaving the house and driving away in the victim’s gray Honda CRV with license plate XSN 668.

As soon as they left, Retita went to the victim’s room and saw him lying on the floor beside a blood-stained blanket, his feet tied together with a piece of rope.

Upon initial examination, police investigators found a gunshot wound on the victim’s forehead although there were four cartridges and a bullet from a gun of a still undetermined caliber at the scene.

Hizon said that Retita had told them that three of the victim’s firearms were missing, raising the possibility that he may have been shot by the men with his own gun.—With Maress Legaspi, trainee