QCPD revamp sought after racer’s slay

PASTOR

With the Quezon City Police District still facing a blank wall concerning Thursday’s murder of  racing champ Ferdinand “Enzo” Pastor, an anticrime watchdog said a change in the QCPD leadership was in order since the case would most likely add to the long list of unsolved killings carried out by motorbike-riding gunmen in the city.

“Our police are helpless against these motorcycle-riding criminals. It’s about time that the police hierarchy be revamped because they cannot stop these hoodlums,” said Dante Jimenez, founding chair of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC). “It seems that the PNP (Philippine National Police) has been unable to address this problem for many years, especially in Quezon City.”

Jimenez also called on the government to offer a bounty on Pastor’s killer or on the person who ordered the hit.

The VACC chair issued the statement as the QCPD spokesperson, Senior Insp. Maricar Taqueban, said investigators had yet to come up with suspects or a plausible motive for the June 12 ambush that killed Pastor, 32, and wounded his helper Paolo Salazar, 20, at a Quezon City intersection.

Insp. Elmer Monsalve, homicide section chief, said “all possible angles” were being pursued, noting that the investigators had already talked to Pastor’s widow Dalia but still got no leads.

Pastor and Salazar were in a truck transporting a race car to Clark, Pampanga province, Thursday night when a masked gunman fired at Pastor through the window, after the truck stopped at a red light at the intersection of Congressional and Visayas avenues. Pastor, who was driving, was hit in the head while Salazar was hit in the abdomen.

On Saturday, bike-riding gunmen struck again in Quezon City, this time killing a woman who was shot while helping a friend mind a store.

Agnes Advincula, 29, a jobless resident of Barangay Holy Spirit, died while being treated in the hospital for gunshot wounds in the chest and neck.

Quoting a witness to the shooting, PO2 Rhic Roldan Pittong said a man arrived at the store around 8:30 a.m. asking if it was selling cell phone load. After Advincula said yes and then turned her back, the man drew a pistol and shot her several times.

The assailant then ran to a black Honda Wave motorcycle and escaped together with another man. They were last seen heading toward Republic Avenue.