Radioman slain inside own store in Masbate

NAGA CITY—A radio news stringer was shot dead inside a store he owned in the market place of Pio V. Corpus town in Masbate on Sunday, police said.

Miguelito “Mike” Rueras, 49, who was a stringer of radio station dyDD, or El Nuevo Bantay Radyo based in Cebu City, was shot dead by a lone assailant at 7:50 a.m. while he was inside his store at the town’s public market located in Barangay (village) Poblacion, provincial police director Superintendent Heriberto Olitoquit said by phone on Monday.

Valeriano “Jun” Carillo, station manager of dyDD, said Reuras was trained and became a barangay reporter of Bantay Radyo-Cebu because he was residing in the Cebuano-speaking town of Pio V. Corpus and reported events from his area.

But in the May elections, Rueras was not active in radio reporting, as he was known to be identified with the camp of then reelectionist and now reelected Gov. Rizalina Seachon-Lanete, Carillo said in a phone interview on Monday.

He said Rueras had not been submitting reports to dyDD since the last elections.

Rueras was dead on the spot from two bullet wounds in his left chest fired at close range, said Olitoquit.

The gunman, who came aboard a black motorcycle, used a .45-cal. pistol in killing Ruera and escaped toward a hilly portion of adjacent Barangay Labigan, also in Pio V. Corpus, said an earlier report released by Maj. Angelo Guzman, spokesperson of the Army’s 9th Infantry Division based in Pili, Camarines Sur.

Responding scene of the crime operatives recovered from the store two spent cartridges and an empty slug from the .45-cal. pistol.

Olitoquit said they were still determining the identity of the gunman and the motive behind the crime.

Nothing seemed to have been taken from the store, which could rule out robbery as a motive, said a police investigator, who asked not to be named for lack of authority to speak on the investigation. Shiena M. Barrameda and Mar Arguelles, Inquirer Southern Luzon