Police rule out politics in attack on lawyer

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga—Investigators have ruled out politics or the upcoming elections as a motive in Thursday night’s  attack by two gunmen on a lawyer at a busy intersection in the town of Mexico, the town’s chief of police said Friday.

Superintendent Neil Miro, Mexico police chief, said investigators reached this conclusion because Ryann Rueda, 31, who was seriously wounded in the ambush, was not involved in local or national politics and none of his clients were candidates in the May 13 elections.

“We ruled those out (politics and elections),” Miro told the Inquirer. “We are looking at his job and personal relationships.”

Pampanga is one of the 15 election hot spots identified by the police and the Commission on Elections. Some 10 village leaders have been killed since 2012 but the police have not linked any of them to the elections.

Rueda is single and teaches at the Angeles University Foundation in Angeles City.

Two policemen have been guarding his room at a hospital in San Fernando, Pampanga’s capital. A police report said he suffered serious gunshot wounds.

Rueda was driving his car in Barangay Parian in Mexico around 7 p.m. when the assailants, who were on a motorcycle, fired at him.

Policemen pulled him out of the car by breaking its window.

A colleague of his, Gener Endona, said he told investigators that the ambush could not be related to the cases handled by their firm.

The Integrated Bar of the Philippines chapter in Pampanga has yet to issue a statement on the ambush.

“We are getting the facts in this incident,” said  Paul Maglalang, an IBP chapter official.

The IBP national office counted as of June 2012 some 200 extrajudicial killings involving lawyers and judges in the last 10 years, according to IBP national president Roan Libarios.

The last victim in Central Luzon was Bataan-based lawyer Joe Frank Zuniga, who went missing on July 20, 2012  after leaving a meeting with executives of Ocean Adventure, a client of his at the Subic Bay Freeport. His car was found later that night on a dike two kilometers from the Zambales-Pangasinan Highway in Barangay Carael in Botolan, Zambales.