Drug war resumes with post-New Year ‘bangs!’

What Ma. Luz Aguilar thought to be firecrackers lit up by her Pasay City neighbors in post-New Year revelry turned out to be gunshots targeting her live-in partner.

In a statement to the police, the 36-year-old resident of Canoy Street, Barangay 132, said she heard three loud bangs around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday and later found Antonio Perez IV, 33, lying in a pool of blood inside a shanty beside theirs.

SPO1 Giovanni Arcinue, the officer on the case, said a still-unidentified gunman killed Perez on the spot, and that crime scene investigators later found a sachet of suspected “shabu” next to his body.

According to Arcinue, Aguilar admitted in an affidavit that Perez, who worked part-time as an auto mechanic, was peddling drugs in their neighborhood and used the shanty as a drug den for his customers.

Barangay 132 chair Roberto Saldo also confirmed that Perez was on the local drug watch list.

 QCPD’s 1st kill of the year

In Novaliches, a drug suspect was killed in the first buy-bust operation conducted this year by the Quezon City Police District.

A report to Chief Supt. Guillermo Lorenzo Eleazar, the QCPD director, identified the fatality as Rodolfo Rebadajo, 35 and jobless, who allegedly initiated a “shootout ” around 7:30 p.m. on Ginintuang Landas, Barangay Santa Monica.

A team from QCPD-Novaliches launched the operation against Rebadajo, who met them for the transaction but later sensed that he was dealing with undercover policemen. His alleged cohort known only as Estong managed to escape.

Rebadajo allegedly wielded a. 38-caliber revolver with no serial number and was found keeping two sachets of suspected “shabu” in his pocket.

During the last half of 2016 or the first six months of the Duterte administration, at least 250 people were killed in what the QCPD maintained to be legitimate entrapment operations wherein the targeted suspects shot it out with the police.