4 days after seeing PDI, Munti RTC worker killed

A local court employee was shot dead in Muntinlupa City on Friday, four days after he approached the Inquirer to draw attention to the sexual harassment and corruption complaints filed against another court worker.

Lawrence Panganiban, 36, a staff member of the Muntinlupa Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 256, was shot in the head by a still-unidentified gunman on a motorbike while driving his car on Guillermo Street, Barangay Bayanan, around 10:40 a.m.

Muntinlupa police officer in charge Senior Supt. Allan Nobleza said investigators had yet to determine the motive for the killing, but that they had obtained copies of the complaints Panganiban spoke of and noted his reasons for meeting the Inquirer on Monday.

The Inquirer is withholding the identity of the respondent in the two complaints pending the police investigation into Friday’s killing.

In an interview on May 5, Panganiban, a Las Piñas City resident, said he came in behalf of a female colleague who accused another court employee of sexual harassment in December last year.

The same employee, he said, was also accused of demanding P10,000 from residents evicted last month from Lakeview Subdivision, in exchange for stopping the demolition of their homes.

Panganiban alleged that the respondent had since been working to have the administrative aspect of the complaint transferred from the jurisdiction of Supreme Court’s Office of the Court Administrator (OCA) back to the Muntinlupa RTC’s Committee on Decorum and Investigation. That part of the complaint called on OCA to put the respondent on preventive suspension.

Panganiban said he decided to tell the media about it for the sake of the complainant in the sexual harassment case and because the respondent was known to be “influential and well-connected” in the RTC, hoping that the OCA would maintain jurisdiction over the matter.

Panganiban had worked in the Muntinlupa Hall of Justice for 15 years.