2 men in cutthroat murder charged

The Quezon City Prosecutor’s office on Monday charged two men with the killing of a businesswoman inside her house last week.

No bail was recommended for Von Bernardo and Ariel Cristobal who were charged with robbery with homicide in connection with death of Ma. Salud Gatmaitan on March 20.

In addition, Prosecutor Alessandro Jurado also charged the two men with attempted homicide for beating up Gatmaitan’s housemaid, Mayla Fadera.

Jurado set their bail at P12,000 each, according to case investigator SPO1 Joselito Gagaza.

However, the complaint for frustrated murder in connection with the two men’s attack on Gatmaitan’s 84-year-old mother, Noemi Pineda, was set for further investigation.

Gatmaitan died on the spot after one of the men slit her throat with a pair of scissors. The suspects also hit Fadera and Pineda repeatedly with a blunt object, sending both to the hospital.

Pineda has yet to be released due to her injuries, Gagaza said.

“We now consider this a solved case,” Senior Supt. Richard Albano of the Quezon City Police District said in a press conference yesterday.

The suspects were arrested in a drug bust on Saturday night on Tomas Morato Avenue, Quezon City. The police later realized that the two men were the suspects in Gatmaitan’s death.

The prosecutor’s office also charged Bernardo and Cristobal with illegal possession of firearms, violation of the election gun ban and drug possession after they yielded a gun and a still undetermined quantity of what was believed to be “shabu” or methamphetamine hydrochloride.

The two suspects were later positively identified by Fadera as the ones who killed her employer and attacked her and the victim’s mother.

The 59-year-old Gatmaitan who ran a lending business was killed inside her house on Ipo Street in La Loma, Quezon City.

Albano said they were eyeing as a motive Bernardo’s alleged grudge against the victim after his wife almost killed herself because of the large sum of money she supposedly owned the victim.