Suspect in the 2009 ambush of Laguna board member nabbed

CAMP PACIANO RIZAL, Laguna, Philippines — Another suspect in the 2009 ambush that left three people dead, one of them a provincial board member of Laguna, was arrested in San Pablo City on Thursday.

Senior Superintendent Pascual Munoz, the Laguna police director, said Rey Flores was arrested in his home in the remote village of San Bartolome at around 10:40 a.m.

Flores is facing three counts of murder based on the arrest warrant from Branch 30 of the Regional Trial Court in San Pablo City.

“He was in hiding for a long time and we just took the chance, thinking he might visit his family after the New Year,” said Supt. Ericson Dilag, the San Pablo City police chief, in a phone interview.

Flores was one of the 11 suspects identified and charged before the Department of Justice for the murder of Laguna Board Member Danilo Yang on June 24, 2009.

Yang, a known anti-drug crusader in the city, was hosting an amateur singing contest in a fiesta when he was ambushed. Yang’s bodyguard, Brando de los Santos, and a former village chief, Romulo Barcenas, were also killed, while another bodyguard and a bystander were injured.

Quoting the suspect, Dilag said Flores claimed he was only “forced to join the group” but did not actually participate in the shooting. Dilag said Flores was the third suspect in the case arrested over the past few years.

In June 2012, another Laguna board member, Reynaldo Paras and his bodyguard Geovanni Dumaraos were also killed in an ambush near the official’s house, also in San Pablo City.