BY DOMINIQUE GABRIEL BAÑAGA
BACOLOD City – Motorcycle-riding gunman fatally shot a police officer assigned at the intelligence section of the municipal police station in Pontevedra, Negros Occidental yesterday.
Police Staff Sergeant Ildefonso Casugod, 37, succumbed to a gunshot wound on the head.
He was rushed to the Bago City District Hospital but did not make it alive, according to Captain Hancel Lumandaz, Pontevedra police chief.
The incident happened around 6 a.m. in the presence of town Mayor Jose Maria Alonzo.
Casugod was jogging at a reclamation area with Alonso and two other companions when the gunman walked up to the victim from behind and shot him.
The assassin, who wore a face mask, hooded jacket, and black jogging pants, walked towards a waiting scooter and escaped.
Police Colonel Romy Palgue, provincial police chief, said Mayor Alonso was unharmed in the attack.
The mayor said in an interview that he usually meets with fellow joggers at the reclamation area about four times a week and had just spoken to Casugod shortly before the incident happened.
According to Palgue, there is a possibility that the attack was perpetrated by the Special Partisan Unit (SPARU) of the New People’s Army, saying rebels usually launch atrocities against the police and the military in dates surrounding its founding anniversary.
“We are looking into it but we cannot tell yet para hindi ma-hamper ang ating imbestigasyon,” said Palgue.
Negros Occidental’s Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson hoped the perpetrators would be arrested.
“Justice has to be given to the family of the slain policeman,” he said./PN
