Two Tagoloan men slain in gun attacks

By LITO RULONA
Correspondent

STILL unidentified gunmen barged into the homes of two men in the police watchlist and riddled them with bullets in front of their families in Tagoloan town, Misamis Oriental, on Thursday night.

The common law wife of one of the victims suffered an aborted pregnancy after she was hit by a bullet. A little boy was also wounded.

SPO4 Galeon Tawili said the first to be killed was Rommel Jimenez, 46, of Zone 6, Lower Tinugon Barangay Mohon, Tagoloan. The victim was shot in front of his family.

The second to be killed was 41-year old Walter Quinquiño of Sitio Ganhaan, Barangay Sta. Cruz.  His common law wife Jessa Tequillo, who was three months pregnant, was hit by a bullet in the womb — she lost the baby.

Quinquiño and Tequillo’s four-year old son, Junward, was hit by what appeared to be a stray bullet in the left leg.

It was unclear if the armed men who killed Jimenez belonged to the same group that attacked Quinquiño.

But there were striking similarities in the two murder cases that took place about an hour apart from each other — the victims were shot to the head and had other gunshot wounds all over; the assailants concealed their identities using helmets and bullcaps, used high-powered weapons, and barged into the homes of their victims.

Police alleged that Jimenez had criminal cases while Quinquiño was supposedly ranked fifth in the Tagoloan police’s drug watchlist.

Witnesses said there were at least five gunmen in the two shooting deaths, and they merely walked away from the crime scenes.

SPO4 Tawili said the  suspects either wore helmets and bullcaps when they barged in the houses in barangays Mohon and Sta. Cruz.

“The suspects are still unidentified,” said Tawili.

Camp Alagar spokesman Supt. Lemuel Gonda said investigators were also looking into the killing of a 29-year old farmer in Tagoloan at dawn Tuesday. Like Jimenez and  Quinquiño, the farmer, too, was killed shot and killed inside his house.

But Gonda was quick to downplay the shooting deaths as the handiwork of criminals even as he dismissed suspicions that these were extrajudicial killings.

“It’s a standard operating procedure nga pa-inbestigahan gyud dayun. But plainly, [these were not] extrajudicial killings kay wala man sila gikuha og gidakop sa mga pulis and other law enforcement agencies unya namatay gilayon sila,” said Gonda, adding that as far as the police was concerned, these were “plain shooting” incidents.

“Ato pa kuhaon kung unsa ang background sa mga victims,” he said.

He said Camp Alagar has a policy of intolerance against police officers who operate outside the law.

Gonda warned that any officer caught putting the law in his own hands would be criminally and administratively charged.

He also appealed to people to keep their distance whenever there are police operations so that they would not be hit in the crossfires or by stray bullets in cases when there are shootouts.