Police probe attack on another school exec in Zamboanga City

ZAMBOANGA CITY –- Police authorities here are investigating the attack on another school official even as they are trying to resolve October’s similar incident that wounded the president of a Christian school.

The latest victim, as confirmed by Senior Superintendent Dennis Basngi, city police chief, was Ma. Victoria Montaño, the assistant to the president of the Ateneo de Zamboanga University (AdZU).

Montaño, 49, was arriving home in Barangay (village) Tetuan from work around 6:30 p.m. on Thursday when two gunmen suddenly emerged and shot her several times.

Basngi said the victim suffered two gunshot wounds but had survived the ordeal.

“The victim is undergoing medical treatment,” he said.

Chief Inspector Elmer Acuna, chief of the Tetuan Police Station, said investigators recovered a total of eight spent 9-millimeter shells from near Montaño’s home in Saavedra Subd.

Two of the bullets fired by the assassins hit her on the abdomen but she’s conscious as she was rushed to a hospital, he said.

The attack on Montaño occurred as the attempt to kill Paulino Ersando, president of Zion Evangelical School here, remained unresolved.

Ersando was with another companion, Pastor Pablo Palis, when he was attacked by gunmen on October 22 inside the Baliwasan Commercial Complex in Barangay Baliwasan. He and Palis were wounded but also survived the attack.

In April 2012, unidentified armed men also shot and killed Universidad de Zamboanga (UZ) President Arturo Eustaquio III.

Eustaquio’s murder remains unresolved.

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