A man and his live-in partner were shot dead by unidentified gunmen on motorbikes in Pasig City on Friday night.
A report by Senior Supt Orlando Yebra Jr., chief of the Pasig City Police Station, identified the victims as Isagani Escuadro, 35, and Ella May Mariano, of MM Street, Soldiers Village, Barangay Sta. Lucia, Pasig.
The couple were walking in the street to buy food at a store near their house at around 7 p.m. when three men with handguns approached and shot them.
Hit several times in the head and body, both were declared dead on the spot by emergency responders.
Yebra’s report said Escuadro was on the drug watch list of the Pasig police.
In an interview on Saturday, Escuadro’s uncle Cesar admitted that his nephew had used drugs for about four years.
Escuadro was briefly jailed in Cainta, Rizal, in February this year for a drug-related offense, Cesar recalled. To raise money for his bail, his family had to pawn their house.
Cesar believed that his nephew was targeted for a vigilante-style attack because of his history of drug use. But he maintained that Escuadro was already a changed man after spending time in jail and later going to Pangasinan province to “recover.”
He said Escuadro chose not to enter Pasig’s own recovery program for drug users because “the attendees were being marked.”
“After they attended the first and second sessions, I noticed that those who missed [the next sessions] were killed,” Cesar said.
“I was hoping that my nephew would not be killed because he was already changing,” he said. “I never realized that losing a family member this way would be this painful. He should have been given another chance. There was no need to kill him.”
He said Mariano, Escuadro’s partner, worked in a garments factory and was not known to take drugs. But she still ended up dead as collateral damage – “nadamay lang.”
Also in Pasig, another man on the police watch list was shot and wounded by an unidentified assailant around 6:15 p.m. Friday.
Yebra said Rodel Odang, 40, was standing on Manga Extension in Barangay Kalawaan when he was shot in the neck.
Odang remained in critical condition at a Pasig hospital as of this posting. /atm