Drug suspect killed in Cabanatuan; Cops blame gang conflict

INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

CABANATUAN CITY– One of the police’s top suspects in the illegal drug trade here was found dead and dumped in a vacant lot in Aduas Centro village at 6:30 a.m. on Thursday (June 16).

The body of 30-year-old Jimbo Ponce bore a deep cut in the neck, his hands were tied together with electric wire and his feet were bound with packaging tape.

Senior Supt. Manuel Cornel, Nueva Ecija police director, said Ponce was ranked number two in the police’s list of drug priority targets.

Ponce was the latest suspected drug peddler in Nueva Ecija to be found dead in what many believed to be a series of summary executions, shortly after incoming President Rodrigo Duterte offered a bounty for the deaths of drug lords.

In Lupao town on Wednesday (May 15), police found the body of a still unidentified man, which was riddled with bullet wounds, along the provincial highway in Balbalungao village at 5:15 a.m.

Two other drug suspects were gunned down in the towns of Cabiao and San Antonio on Tuesday (June 14).

On June 10, alleged drug peddler Sheryll Santos, 31, was shot dead by motorcycle-riding gunmen, who also killed her brother-in-law, Pedro Santos, in Talavera, Nueva Ecija. The woman was with her three children when she was attacked on a tricycle driven by Santos.

When asked, Cornel said the slain drug suspects might have been victims of gang infighting.  SFM/rga