Slain Cainta cop insisted on leading team

Senior Insp. Jimmy Senosin

“I’m the leader. I can’t abandon my men. I should be there.”

This was how Senior Insp. Jimmy Senosin of the Cainta police often psyched himself up before leaving the house whenever called to head a dangerous operation, according to his widow, SPO2 Mary Grace Senosin.

“He need not always be the frontliner. He had a choice and I always told him to stay safe, but he insisted on being the leader,” Mary Grace said in an interview three days after her husband, the town’s deputy chief of police, was killed in an encounter with two drug suspects.

According to the Rizal Provincial Police Office (RPPO), Senosin led a four-man team sent to Barangay San Andres around 7 p.m. on Sunday to look for Robin Paglinawan, who was reportedly causing alarm in his neighborhood after being seen with a gun tucked in his waistband.

The  team saw Paglinawan in the company of Germogenes Lachica, and was greeted with gunfire.

Paglinawan, 38, also allegedly hurled a grenade at the officers. Senosin sustained a bullet wound in the head and died six hours later in the hospital.

Paglinawan fled on foot while Lachica also disappeared after he was last seen running toward his house, where Senosin’s men said they caught his son Jophine and Ronaldo Idolog repacking “shabu” (crystal meth).

The RPPO has formed Task Group Senosin to hunt down Paglinawan and Lachica, whom police linked to drug pushing in the barangay and holdup incidents in the Edsa-Ortigas area.

Cainta Mayor Keith Nieto offered a P100,000 reward for tips leading to the suspects’ capture, and also approved the release of an additional P100,000 in financial assistance to the slain officer’s family.

The local government is also shouldering their funeral expenses and has offered educational assistance to Senosin’s four young children.

“He really loved his job. We both know it’s dangerous, but we lost him too soon,” said the widowed Mary Grace, who reports to the RPPO’s internal affairs unit.

The Cainta police chief, Supt. Raynold Rosero, described Senosin as “a silent worker” who regarded the antidrug campaign as more than just a job he must do.

A commerce graduate from Sorsogon, Senosin “used to be an activist and was almost recruited by the New People’s Army before he moved here. He was really against ill