Cops tag mayor’s brother for slay of board member
CAMP VICENTE LIM, Laguna—Police here have zeroed in on a brother of San Pablo City Mayor Vicente Amante as the alleged mastermind in the ambush-slay of Laguna Provincial Board Member Reynaldo Paras.
Senior Supt. Gilbert Cruz, Laguna police director and head of the police Special Task Group Rey, on Friday said.
Edwin Amante, younger brother of the San Pablo mayor, was linked to the killing of Paras, 55, and his bodyguard-driver, Geovanni Dumaraos, 44, because hours before they were killed, Paras had gone to the Laguna police headquarters asking for security over alleged threats from the younger Amante.
In a phone interview on Friday, Mayor Amante said he would not come to the defense of his brother should the police prove Edwin’s involvement in the case.
“I won’t defend him [because he is my brother] but I only wish [the police] will carefully look into the evidence before they file any case against him,” he said.
Asked if he knew where Edwin was, the mayor said: “Believe me or not, we haven’t spoken for a long time now, maybe a year already.”
Cruz said Paras had feared for his safety because he learned that Edwin had allegedly contracted hired killers from Cavite “because [Edwin] thought [Paras] was tipping off the police about the former’s drug deals.”
Paras, who was gunned down at around 8:20 p.m. on Wednesday near his home in Barangay 7C, died at a hospital in San Pablo City on Thursday afternoon. Dumaraos died before reaching the hospital on Wednesday night.
Cruz said one of the two gunmen, identified as Eugene Bacoto, who was shot when the victims fired back, could no longer be questioned on the whereabouts of his cohorts and identify the mastermind as he died at 8:20 a.m. on Friday at a hospital in San Pablo City.
Edwin Amante was in fact in the police’s watch list for his alleged involvement in the shabu trade in Laguna, Cruz revealed.
Cruz said the police had granted Paras’ request for a security detail that the slain official was supposed to meet in Alaminos, the town next to San Pablo City, hours before he was gunned down.
“We don’t know, maybe he thought of going home first [to San Pablo City]. If he had met the security detail, maybe [the murder] had not happened,” he said.
Cruz said Mayor Amante had agreed to “cooperate” with authorities but also had no idea of the whereabouts of his brother.
The provincial government, meanwhile, offered a P200,000 reward for the information that would lead to the suspects in the Paras murder.
The police on Friday noon filed charges of double murder at the San Pablo prosecutor’s office against three John Does, identified only through their aliases, “El,” “Bugoy,” and “Avatar.”
Cruz said Bacoto, before he died, had revealed the aliases and provided description of his companions in the ambush.
