University official shot dead in Kidapawan City

Content warning: Graphic violence

COTABATO CITY —An official from a state university was shot dead inside her sports utility vehicle while parked along a highway in Barangay Paco, Kidapawan City, Cotabato province, around noontime on Monday, December 30.

Col. Gilbert Tuzon, Cotabato provincial police director, told reporters on Monday afternoon that engineer Shiela Ramos Bautista was shot in the neck with a pistol by an attacker, killing her in the driver’s seat of her Toyota Fortuner with license plate, NCN-229.

Bautista, a resident of Barangay Manongol in Kidapawan City, capital of Cotabato, was a professor and a department head at the University of Southern Mindanao in Kabacan town in the province.

Investigators from the Kidapawan City Police Office and barangay officials in Paco said Bautista’s vehicle was parked properly along the highway, its hand brake set, a clear indication that she pulled over right where she was found dead. 

Relatives of Bautista had told reporters that she left home to deliver a package to a friend.