MORE NEWS, CAGAYAN

Drunk dad kills son; another man beheads daughter

ABULUG, Cagayan – Bothered by his conscience, a resident here gave himself up to authorities for shooting dead his own son while heavily drunk.

Police said Mario de Guzman, resident of Barangay Santa Filomena here also surrendered the Cal. 38 revolver he used in shooting his child, Angel, a Grade 4 student, in the shoulder.

De Guzman went into hiding for days until he turned himself in to barangay officials this week.

The incident came some three weeks after another father, Remegio Dacquigan, 52, of Pamplona town, beheaded his 12-year-old daughter.

Policemen fatally shot Dacquigan after he refused to give himself up and attacked them. He was said to be mentally ill.

Regional office police said the two cases were oddities but added liquor aggravates crime. – CL


‘Influential people’ behind illegal logging in Cagayan

TUGUEGARAO CITY, Cagayan – The provincial government is set to form a multi-agency task force aimed to end the age-old problem of illegal logging, which reportedly had gone worse, even invading a national government protected forest areas here.

Gov. Alvaro Antonio Thursday tagged those behind the rampant illegal cutting of trees here as “influential top-level people.”

Antonio said he expects to finalize the composition of the anti-illegal logging task force soon to show to those behind the raping of the environment that “we mean business.”

“Hopefully, the (task force), which will be deputized and tasked to enforce the laws protecting our environment, especially our forest lands, would already be in place (soon),” he said.

The creation of the said task force came in the wake of reported unabated illegal cutting of trees, including within the foreign-assisted Peñablanca National Park and other government protected forest areas here.

Only recently, authorities had intercepted more than 15,000 board feet of common hardwood like molave, tindalo and narra in Pamplona, Peñablanca, Solana and Lallo towns, bolstering reports that timber poaching was very much active in the province.

The provincial board led by Vice Gov. Leonides Fausto came out with a proposed ordinance prohibiting the transport of lumber products during night time.

Earlier, environment officials said they were having a hard time securing the province’s remaining 110-hectare of forestlands, including Cagayan’s Sierra Madre Mountains from timber poachers with only 14 government forest rangers.

Antonio said that most people in the province know who are those involved in the illegal activity as belonging to the so-called “influential top-level people.”

“These people belong to the top (echelon) of society and it is our plan to talk to them,” he said, adding however, that this would be more in the manner of warning them to stop their illegal activities.