A drug surrenderer and her live-in partner were found dead around Tuesday midnight, hours after they were forcibly taken from their Navotas City residence by 14 armed motorcycle riders wearing ski masks.
The bodies of Jenny Royo, 45, who had earlier surrendered to authorities under the government’s “Oplan Tokhang” and Rogelio Gilbuena, 56, were recovered separately.
Royo, who had a gunshot wound in the torso, was found under a bridge on Babanse Street in Barangay NBBS. Gilbuena, who had been shot in the head, was discovered inside the Navotas Municipal Cemetery in Barangay NBBN.
“I admit that my [step]mother was a former drug addict. But she already surrendered to barangay [officials] and had been attending sessions for surrenderers. My stepfather was not an addict,” Joy Gilbuena, the couple’s 17-year-old daughter, told reporters.
‘Policemen’
According to Joy, around 14 men on motorcycles without license plates abducted her parents from their house in Market 3 inside the Navotas Fish Port Complex on R-10.
“They introduced themselves as policemen,” she said, adding, “They said we should follow them to the police station.”
From 8 p.m. to midnight, Joy and her siblings began looking for their parents, first at the Navotas police station.
When told that the couple were not there, they went to Caloocan, Malabon, Navotas and Manila until they heard that a body had been found under the bridge on Babanse Street.
The children rushed to the area where the police were already processing the crime scene. When they spotted their mother’s body cordoned off behind the yellow police line, they squatted by the side of the road, wailing and screaming.
The search for their father ended at the Navotas Municipal Cemetery where he was found with a gunshot wound in the head. His body was later examined by the same police team which had processed his partner’s.
Continued drug deals
An investigation is under way to identify the couple’s killers, according to Senior Supt. Dante Novicio, the Navotas police chief.
Novicio pointed out that they had received reports that Royo continued to make drug deals despite her earlier surrender to authorities.
The police were also checking Gilbuena’s possible involvement in the drug trade but so far, there was no indication that he was a drug addict, the official added.
He added that they were facing a blank wall in the investigation because according to witnesses, the suspects were wearing “bonnets and their motorcycles did not have plate numbers.”
Novicio said they would check the possible route taken by the suspects to the places where the victims’ bodies were found so that they could ask for copies of footage taken by closed-circuit television cameras in these areas.