SIGN OF THE TIMES A checkpoint along Granada Street, Quezon City, manned by the police and Army personnel, reminds the public of the country’s alert status since the Sept. 2 Davao City bombing. Lyn Rillon
In a span of 12 hours from Wednesday afternoon to early Thursday morning, five people were shot dead in the latest series of extrajudicial killings (EJK) in Metro Manila.
They included a barangay chair in Caloocan City and four residents in Pasig City.
The Caloocan police said their investigation into the killing of Barangay 53 Chair Prolly Bolo would consider reports that he protected relatives involved in illegal drugs.
Bolo was having a drink with a friend at a junk shop on 6th Avenue in his barangay when shot by masked men on motorcycles around 3:45 p.m. Wednesday, according to Senior Supt. Johnson Almazan, the city police chief.
Almazan said his men had received reports that Bolo coddled some of his relatives involved in illegal drugs. “He gave them protection. Up to what extent? We have yet to know,” said the official, who had formed a special probe team for Bolo’s case.
In Pasig, three of the four victims were residents who were earlier included by the local police on their drug watch list.
Still, the city’s police chief, Senior Supt. Orlando Yebra Jr., said such killings are “not to be considered alarming because (they are) happening everywhere and we have found out that in some cases the killings are perpetrated by drug syndicates.”
“We are investigating all these killings and we have leads,” Yebra stressed in a text message to the Inquirer.
In reports reaching Yebra’s office, the latest four victims were killed by unidentified gunmen in barangays Rosario, Pineda, Caniogan and Maybunga. They were as follows:
Jessie Dabon, 45, who was shot dead in his house at Masikip, Rosario, around 11 p.m. Wednesday;
Mark Anthony Pandes, 30, who was attacked while standing in front of his house along MRR Street, Pineda, around 12:25 a.m. Thursday;
Enrico Espinoza, 27, who was shot around 12:30 a.m. Thursday inside his house along Col. Licsi Street, Caniogan; and
A still unidentified man who was gunned down along Jenny Avenue Extension, Maybunga, around 4 a.m. Thursday; he was described to be 40 to 45 years old, about 5’7” tall, and wearing jeans and a white T-shirt.
Earlier, Chief Supt. Romulo Sapitula, director of the Eastern Police District which covers Pasig, said the spate of extrajudicial killings in the city could be the handiwork of the Boratong group, which used to operate a “shabu tiangge” or a compound in Barangay Sto. Tomas where drug peddling had gone unchecked for years until the police launched a crackdown in 2006.
In Quezon City, another drug suspect on the watch list of the Quezon City Police District’s Station 10 in Kamuning was killed in a buy-bust operation in Barangay Immaculate Conception early Thursday.
The fatality, identified only as “Fidel,” allegedly fired at the officers who had him entrapped on Aurora Boulevard corner E. Rodriguez Avenue around 1:30 a.m. The QCPD said a .45-caliber pistol, six sachets of “shabu,” aluminum foil strips, lighters and P839 in cash were recovered from the slain suspect. With a report from Maricar Brizuela