Raging cop hunted for Pasig baby’s death

Authorities are looking for the policeman who reportedly went amuck and opened fire in a street in Pasig City, killing a two-year-old girl Monday morning.

An initial investigation showed that PO3 Reynante Cueto, who reports to the Police Security and Protection Group in Camp Crame, went berserk upon learning that his younger brother Jason, a fellow police officer, was shot and wounded by a neighbor identified as Datumandog Boratong.

The older Cueto fired at least five rounds outside his mother’s house at Magdalena compound on Baltazar Street, Barangay (village) Santo Tomas, around 8:25 a.m., with one stray bullet hitting the infant Ana Mariz Abayon in the forehead. The child was then peering out of a door two houses away.

About 25 minutes earlier, Jason was shot allegedly by Boratong at point-blank range outside the same house while he was helping his mother prepare the dumplings she sells at a stall. Jason, a Police Officer 1 reporting to the Quezon City Police District’s Project 4 station, was hit in the back of his head and remained in critical condition at a hospital Tuesday.

The investigator on the child’s shooting, PO3 Rodelio Olalia, said Abayon’s fear-stricken parents came to the police station only on Monday night or hours after the incident, to report that Cueto accidentally shot the youngest of their two children.

Olalia said Cueto may have snapped when he learned that his brother was shot by Boratong, who carried out the attack accompanied by a man identified only as “Itlog.”

Jason’s superior in the QCPD, Supt. Danilo Pecana, suspected that the officer was targeted because of his antidrug operations.

The police were still checking Tuesday if Datumandog Boratong is related to convicted drug lord Amin Imam Boratong, operator of the notorious “shabu tiangge” in Pasig City. With a report from Jaymee T. Gamil