Cops arrest Isabela bank exec's killer

By Charlie Lagasca

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya – A suspect in the killing of a bank executive in Isabela was arrested Tuesday. 

Senior Supt. Franklin Mabanag, Isabela police director, identified the suspect as Joey Bautista, who admitted to killing Johnson Pascual on Oct. 2 last year. 

Pascual was former manager of the First Isabela Cooperative Bank (FICO) branch in Maddela, Quirino. 

He was also a columnist of a local news weekly.

Policemen nabbed Bautista along the national highway in Barangay Victoria in Alicia town by virtue of a warrant for another murder case filed against him before the sala of Judge Tomas Talavera of the Cabanatuan City regional trial court.  

Mabanag said Bautista admitted during the interrogation that he was with one alias Buddy Palabay during the killing.   

Pascual, who was also acting editor-in-chief of FICO’s Prime News was shot dead by two men on a motorcycle while he was driving his Isuzu Crosswind along the national highway in Alicia town’s Rizaluna village in Isabela.

Mabanag, however, did not identify the brains behind the killing, whom he said paid the suspect P200,000 to eliminate Pascual. “The mastermind is a big personality in the province. But we are still investigating the veracity of his alleged involvement,” he said. 

Police earlier said that the motive in the killing was related to the victim’s work as a bank manager and not on his being a media practitioner.