School principal, teacher, survive ambush in BARMM village

FILE

COTABATO CITY — A school officer-in-charge and her female co-teacher miraculously survived a daylight gun attack on Tuesday in Kapinpilan village in the newly created town of Kadayangan in the Special Geographic Area of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

The attack occurred at 7 a.m. while the teachers were heading for school, according to Lieutenant Colonel Realan Mamon, police chief of Midsayap town in Cotabato province.

Mamon, who responded within three minutes to the calls for help of concerned citizens, named the victims as Aurora Bayog Lida, 51, OIC-principal of Kapinpilan National High School, and her co-teacher Maria Corazon P. Tagacay, 38. Both are residents of Midsayap, Cotabato.

Police said the teachers, now under the Ministry of Basic Higher and Technical Education of the BARMM, were on their way to school on a motorbike driven by Tagacay when the gunmen shot Lida.

Lida suffered a gunshot wound in her abdomen while Tagacay had bruises after she fell from the motorcycle during the shooting. She was not hit, however.

Police found empty shells for caliber .45 at the crime scene.

Mamon said the village, one of the 63 in Cotabato province that opted to join the BARMM, a decision that was ratified in a 2019 plebiscite, was no longer within the jurisdiction of Midsayap police. Still, they responded to the citizens’ calls and rushed the teachers to the hospital.