MANILA: Just a few days into the election period, a band of suspected hired guns fired the first lethal shot, murdering a town mayor two blocks away from the family home of President Aquino in Quezon City.
Mayor Erlinda Domingo, who was seeking re-election in Maconacon, Isabela, was shot in the head as she was getting out of her maroon Mitsubishi Adventure (SJA 893) in front of the Park Villa Apartelle at the corner of Examiner street and Quezon Avenue in West Triangle the other night. She was found lying in a pool of blood beside the vehicle.
Her driver-bodyguard, Bernard Plasos, ran after the killers but was shot and wounded in the right leg. He took refuge in the apartelle and is recuperating at the East Avenue Medical Centre in Quezon City.
One of the suspects fled through Times street and tried to hide in a construction site, running smack into the police contingent that is regularly positioned around the Aquino family home.
Officials said that Domingo was in Manila with her vice mayor as well as the mayor and vice mayor of Benito Soliven town in Isabela.
A member of the Nationalist People’s Coalition, Domingo had attended a get-together at the party’s clubhouse in New Manila, Quezon City.
Domingo was returning to the apartelle, where she and her bodyguard had checked in the night before, when the gunmen attacked at around 8pm, according to Senior Superintendent Joel Pagdilao, Deputy Chief for Administration of the Quezon City police.
Albano said P300,000 in cash was found in Domingo’s possession.
The Philippine Star
