Murdered Isabela mayor buried;hunt on for rival

By Charlie Lagasca

ILAGAN CITY – Police have upped a manhunt to locate the rival for the mayoral post of the mayor of Maconacon, Isabela, who was shot dead at a parking lot of an inn in Quezon City and was buried in a public cemetery in her coastal town Feb. 3.

Erlinda Domingo’s husband, Celso Domingo Sr., did not come home from Texas, USA to attend her funeral.

The mayor’s eldest daughter, Liezel Domingo-Vicente, 24, has yet to decide whether to substitute for her mother in the mayoral elections.

The young Domingo is a nurse at the rural health office.

Should Vicente refuse the party nomination, the slain mayor’s political rival, Walter Villanueva, who is among those being eyed in her killing, will run unopposed.

Authorities are still scouring the hinterlands of Sierra Madre in search Villanueva who they said, could be involved in the killing.

Senior Supt. Franklin Mabanag, Isabela police director, said Villanueva could have a hand in the murder of Domingo in Quezon City on the night of Jan. 22.

Mabanag said Villanueva could be hiding in Divilacan, another Isabela coastal town which can only be through foot trails, chartered flights or a 24-hour boat ride from Cagayan’s northernmost town of Santa Ana along the South China Sea.

Villanueva, a Muslim convert, was last seen in Maconacon in October last year when he filed his certificate of candidacy as an independent against the second-term-seeking Domingo of the Nationalist People’s Coalition.

Mabanag and his men flew to Maconacon last week to verify the whereabouts of Villanueva, but to no avail.

Provincial officials are also uncertain as to where he is.

Isabela Gov. Faustino Dy III told the media that Villanueva is already considered a principal suspect in the Domingo killing.

He said the arrest of suspected triggerman Marsibal Abduhadi could also lead to the unmasking of the slay brains.

Abduhadi’s alleged cohorts, his wife, Mary Grace, Christian Pajenado and Michael Domingo, were arrested a few hours after the killing.

They are now facing murder charges before the Quezon City prosecutor’s office.

Villanueva’s mayoral bid was allegedly endorsed by the family of the late Maconacon mayor Francisco Talosig, who was also slain in Tuguegarao City, Cagayan in May 2009.

Talosig’s death paved the way for Domingo, then the vice mayor, to assume the mayoral post.

Domingo beat Villanueva and Talosig’s son Royle Gordon in the 2010 elections. The Talosigs have denied any involvement in the Domingo killing.

Domingo, 51, was shot in the back of her head as she was getting out of her Mitsubishi Adventure outside the Park Ville Apartelle in Quezon City last Jan. 22.

Her driver, Bernard Plasos, was also shot and wounded when he tried to chase the suspects.