Mayor orders probe of gun scare at mall involving own brother

ROSALES, Pangasinan—Mayor Susan Casareno ordered the police here to investigate the shooting incident that involved her brother in front of a mall here on Sunday.

Casareno’s brother, Julio Pagador, 55, was shot by a policeman after failing to pacify him. Pagador was brandishing a .45-cal. pistol, and had scared mall-goers and pedestrians at the national road fronting the SM Rosales.

In a letter to Chief Insp. Randy Arellano, Rosales police chief, Casareno said she could not tolerate the gun-toting incident even if it involved a member of her family.

“You are hereby ordered to render appropriate action on the said incident. Rest assured that I will not dip my hand into your investigation of the case nor bar you from filing appropriate charges,” Casareno said in her Dec. 22 letter.

The incident was captured on video and went viral minutes after a lawyer uploaded it on social media.

The video shows a man, identified as Pagador, walking toward the mall entrance. He fired shots in the air, sending people inside the mall and its vicinity into panic. No one was reported injured.

A policeman and two police trainees had earlier confronted Pagador and asked him to surrender his gun.

The policeman, PO3 Victoriano Natividad, later shot Pagador, hitting him in the abdomen. Pagador was then wrestled to the ground and was taken to a hospital for treatment.

Police said Pagador was drunk and was near the mall to look for a man with whom he had an altercation.

Casareno had reportedly apologized to the SM Rosales management for the trouble that her brother had created.

Supt. Ferdinand de Asis, provincial police spokesperson, said charges had been filed against Pagador at the prosecutor’s office here. He said Natividad and the two police trainees, PO1 Arnold Sumangil Jr. and PO1 Rolando Miniano, are now also facing administrative cases.

As of 11 a.m. Wednesday, the three-minute video of the incident had collected 1,389,849 views and was shared 68,010 times since lawyer Genaro Marinas posted it on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/genaro.marinas) at 7:56 p.m. on Dec. 21.

In the comments thread, netizens were concerned that Natividad had not disarmed Pagador before he started firing his weapon in the air outside the mall.

They were also angered when they found out that the man, who kicked and wrestled Pagador after he was shot, was a civilian who happened to be at the scene. Gabriel Cardinoza, Inquirer Northern Luzon