PALAYAN CITY
– Nueva Ecija Vice Gov. Jose Gay Padiernos has expressed alarm
over the spate of killings in Gapan City, his hometown, where he said a “reign
of terror” prevails.
Speaking at the
sidelines of last Monday’s session of the provincial board of which he is the
presiding officer, Padiernos said the peace and order condition in Gapan City
is now chaotic.
“It’s no joke. I
thought it was just one or two killings but it seems there is now a pattern.
It’s my moral obligation to find out the situation,” Padiernos told reporters.
He issued the
statement after Supt. Bernard Orig, Gapan police chief, briefed him and several
board members on recent high-profile killings in the city.
Over the past two
months, the Gapan police recorded four high-profile killings, including the
ambush attempt on Emerson Pascual where four people, including a rookie
policeman, were killed, and the gun attack on councilor Danilo de Guzman last
Aug. 31.
Aside from these, the
city election officer was wounded in an ambush by motorcycle-riding gunmen in
Jaen town on Aug. 23.
The incidents prompted
the provincial board to summon Orig to shed light on the crime situation in
Gapan.
Orig said they have
identified the assailants in the four incidents and have filed the appropriate
charges.
He, however, said the
string of killings did not mean a general breakdown of peace and order in the
city. “There is no reign of terror in Gapan, that I assure you,” he said.
He said the attack on
Pascual was a simple case of “history repeating itself,” apparently referring
to the raid on a cockpit owned by the Pascuals in 2006 which led to the
killings of Pascual’s brothers Erickson and Ebertson.
Mayor
Maricel Natividad’s father, former mayor Ernesto Natividad, and 17 others were
charged for the 2006 attack.
The elder Natividad was arrested while
undergoing dialysis in Metro Manila a few months before the May 2013 elections.
-- MG
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