Town police chief not beheaded. says: ‘Am still alive’

DAVAO CITY — President Rodrigo Duterte may have been misinformed when he reported that terrorists who rampaged through Marawi City had beheaded the police chief of Malabang town in Lanao del Sur.

Mr. Duterte said on Wednesday that the police chief, whom he did not identify, was stopped at a checkpoint on Tuesday by the gunmen who decapitated the officer “right then and there.”

Still alive

The Malabang police chief, however, is still at his post he had occupied just two months earlier.

“I’m still alive,” Senior Insp. Romeo Enriquez told the Inquirer by phone on Thursday.

Authorities said five soldiers and two police officers were killed in clashes with Abu Sayyaf and Maute group fighters.

Enriquez said he replaced one of the slain officers — Senior Insp. Freddie Manuel Solar — as police chief of Malabang two months ago. Solar was shot, not beheaded by his killers.

The body of the other officer, Insp. Edwin Placido, deputy police chief of Marawi, still has not been retrieved as of this writing.

Solar was a graduate of the Philippine National Police Academy Class 2007 and served as Marawi police intelligence chief.

He was outside Amai Pakpak Medical Center in a police car when the gunmen seized him. His abductors later shot him dead. —NICO ALCONABA/rga