Stolen truck from Oro used in ambush

By NITZ ARANCON
Correspondent

A NEW twist developed in the May 3 shooting death of businessman Ferdinand Corrales here after police discovered that one of the getaway vehicles used by the group behind Monday’s ambush in Pantar town in Lanao del Norte is the same pick-up truck the gunmen took from the businessman.

Supt. Lemuel Gonda, operations and planning chief of the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office (Cocpo), confirmed that Corrales’s white Ford Ranger pick-up truck is one of the two vehicles abandoned by the group that staged the Pantar ambush.

The vehicles were abandoned in Lanao del Norte after these were used in the ambush that left a soldier killed and seven other wounded in Pantar town early this week.

Gonda said the Highway Patrol Group checked the chassis and engine numbers of the pick-up truck and confirmed that it belonged to Corrales, owner of Egie Pie Taxi based in this city.

The license plates of the pick-up truck were replaced with plates with the marking “Prosecutor.” Corrales was shot to the head around noon time in May 3 ––the day of the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight–– while he was buying spare parts near Cogon market here. The gunmen then fled, and left investigators with little or no clue at all.

Gonda said the Pantar discovery could lead the Corrales case investigators to the businessman’s killers so they could be brought to justice.

Corrales’s pick-up truck and a black Toyota Revo with license plates XPS-264 were brought to the Iligan police crime laboratory for documentation.

Gonda said the vehicles would then be brought to the police’s crime laboratory at Camp Evangelista for further examination.

He said authorities were able to identify the man who drove the Toyota Revo––a barangay chairman in the town of Madalum in Lanao del Sur.