NBI searches Pangasinan town mayor’s house

Guialaludin Sacandal “Boy Muslim” Otto (left) and former Lingayen Vice Mayor Ramon Arcinue with his wife Zoraida. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—The National Bureau of Investigation raided a house and farm of the mayor of Urbiztondo in Pangasinan  at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday in connection with the killing of a politician and his wife in Manila last year, an NBI official said.

The official said a search of the four-story house of Mayor Ernesto Balolong Jr., which was continuing as of 9 a.m., had yielded 16 firearms.

The official said the mayor was cooperative with the raiders after they showed him a search warrant issued by a Manila judge.

The warrant was issued following the arrest of an alleged gun-for-hire, identified as Guialaludin Sacandal “Boy Muslim” Otto,  in General Santos City earlier this month.

According to the NBI, Otto was positively identified as the killer of former Lingayen Vice Mayor Ramon Arcinue and his wife Zorhayda by two sons  of the couple who witnessed  the killings on March 7, 2012 in the Manila district of Sampaloc.

The sons, a medical doctor and a municipal councilor, said Otto looked at them in the eyes as they held their bleeding parents in front of their apartment, before he fled the crime scene.

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