Suspects in car dealer’s murder point at each other

WHO REALLY shot car dealer Venson Evangelista in January 2011?

Two members of the Dominguez carjack gang are pointing at each other as the killer and giving contradicting accounts of the murder in an apparent bid to save their own skins.

While alleged gunman Rolando Talban claimed it was fellow suspect Joel Jacinto who pulled the trigger, Jacinto called him a liar and said it was Talban who shot Venson, corroborating the testimony of a dead state witness.

The victim’s father, Arsenio “Boy” Evangelista, recalled his meeting with Jacinto following the latter’s arrest in Las Piñas City early this week.

Evangelista said Jacinto was seething with anger after watching Talban on television, pointing to him as the gunman.

But when he was arrested, Talban claimed he only wrapped Venson’s head with packing tape after the abduction.

“He’s a liar!” the elder Evangelista quoted Jacinto as saying about Talban during their conversation.

Jacinto was arrested on Thursday by the National Bureau of Investigation, nearly two years after Venson’s abduction and brutal death in January 2011.

Upon his arrest, Jacinto corroborated the testimony of state witness Alfred Mendiola, who was killed in May.

Both Jacinto and Mendiola pointed to Talban as the gunman.

According to Mendiola’s testimony, Jacinto posed as the mechanic who accompanied Mendiola and Talban during the test drive of Venson’s Toyota Land Cruiser.

“Joel also said he was the one who carried Venson, who was hogtied and his face wrapped in packing tape before he was killed,” Evangelista said of Jacinto’s account.

Evangelista asked Jacinto whether his son was killed first or burned alive and then shot, to which Jacinto said the car dealer was already dead before he was burned.