2 dead, 2 hurt in gun attacks in Cotabato town
INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MIDSAYAP, Cotabato — Two persons were killed in separate gun attacks on Thursday night in Pikit town.
In Barangay Dalingaoen, a policeman shot dead soldier Sergeant Roy Degamo, 33, of Carmen town, who belonged to the Army’s 6th Infantry Division.
Major Maxim Peralta, Pikit police chief, said Degamo, who was in civilian clothes and carrying a sling bag, was seen sitting in front of a sari-sari store owned by the mother of suspect Police Senior Sergeant Chris Paul Baldo, 42.
Peralta said the woman asked Degamo why he was still there when the store was already closed at past 6:30 p.m.
Degamo did not respond but showed his pistol inside a half-opened sling bag. This frightened the woman who alerted her son, who was on sick leave.
Peralta said Baldo tried to speak with Degamo, who pulled his pistol, forcing the police officer to open fire.
Baldo, a member of the Midsayap municipal police, surrendered to the Pikit police office after the incident.
Operatives found a .45 pistol beside Degamo’s body.
Peralta said a joint police and Army probe is ongoing.
An hour earlier, unidentified men on board a motorbike shot dead Eliseo Pangako, a farmer in Barangay Balatican, in Pikit.
The gunman shot and wounded Pangako’s two minor grandchildren and fled before village watchmen and police could reach the crime scene.
Peralta noted that since January, more than 20 persons had been shot and injured or killed by unidentified men due to family feud, robbery, hold-up, and other street crimes.
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