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CABANATUAN
CITY—The
National Police is not discounting the possibility that
politics is behind the killing of Lupao, Nueva Ecija
mayor-elect and his cousin, who is the vice mayor-elect
in a cockpit in San Jose City, on Friday night.
Seven,
including a nine-year-old boy, were wounded in the
stampede that followed the shooting.
Five
still-unidentified assailants shot Lupao mayor-elect
Alfredo Vendivil and his cousin, vice mayor-elect
Virgilio Vendivil, as they emerged from the San Jose
Cockpit Arena in barangay Santo Niño at about 11:30 p.m.
They were killed on the spot.
The
fatalities’ other cousin who was in the area at the
time, Manuel Vendivil, barangay chairman of Poblacion,
Lupao, was also hit but survived. Those who were hurt in
the ensuing stampede were: Alberto Olimon, 30 and
Wilfredo Solano, 52, also of Lupao; Pablo Llado, 37,
Marcelino Gulapa, 64, of Cabanatuan City; and Armando
Vallente, 57, and Michael Jordan Caderol, 9, of San Jose
City.
Senior
Supt. Nicanor Alfredo Caballes, Nueva Ecija police
chief, said the gunmen tailed the Vendivils as they left
the cockpit during a break in the cockfight derby.
“While
it is still early to conclude”, he said, “politics can
be one reason behind the killing.”
Vendivil
defeated reelectionist Alex Joanino and another mayoral
candidate, Nestor de Guzman.
Except
for the written complaint of threats and harassment
which de Guzman filed with the Nueva Ecija police
headquarters and the Commission on Elections (Comelec),
there were, however, no major violence and
election-related crimes reported in Lupao during the
past election period.
Caballes
wondered why Vendivil refused police security escorts
even as he was entitled being an incumbent provincial
board member.
“He [Vendivil]
usually shunned security and he’s even seen walking
around in slippers, confident that he had no political
enemies,” Caballes told a radio interview. |
