Cotabato policeman leading fight vs illegal drugs gunned down

COTABATO CITY—The leader of the police’s antidrug task force in this city was shot and killed by two men in Tacurong City on Saturday night, police said.

Senior Supt. Rannie Hachuela, Tacurong City police director, said Senior Insp. Orlando Ramos Guira, 46, head of Cotabato police’s Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operations Task Force, died before reaching a hospital in Tacurong.

Guira, reports said, was supposed to fetch his wife, Jean, a doctor, from Isulan town but she decided to take a tricycle going home to Tacurong because she was not feeling well. Guira, who was on his motorcycle, decided to follow the tricycle along the Isulan-Tacurong national highway.

Act of retaliation?

But two men on a separate motorcycle attacked him when he reached Barangay ECJ Montilla at past 8:30 p.m., Hachuela said. Jean and the tricycle driver took him to a hospital in Tacurong but doctors there failed to revive him.

Senior Supt. Raul Supiter, Sultan Kudarat provincial police director, said Guira led antidrug operations in Cotabato City the past week.

“There is a possibility it could be a reprisal. We are, however, not discounting other possible angles yet,” said Supiter, who described Guira as a dedicated police officer.

Supiter is Guira’s superior officer when the former served as Cotabato police chief.

Vice Mayor Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi condemned Guira’s slaying, saying Cotabato City lost one of its “most effective and efficient” police officers.

Sayadi said Guira’s leadership had led to several arrests of drug users and peddlers in the city the past week.

“We will not stop until the suspects are identified and are put to justice … The city government does not, and will never, tolerate any forms of criminality, especially against people who are helping us eradicate all these wrong doings in our city,” Sayadi said in a statement. Edwin Fernandez, Inquirer Mindanao