Moneylender's slay Charges to be filed vs. policeman today

The Cebu City Police Office is set to file charges against a policemen suspected of killing a moneylender and her secretary inside a lending firm along T. Padilla Extension in barangay Tejero, Cebu City, last September 9.

City police chief Supt. Melvin Gayotin told reporters that the alleged assailant is a policeman under his command but declined to give his name or where he is assigned.

Gayotin said that he already ordered to the police station chief of this policeman to relieve him from his post and assign him to the Service Security Group effective yesterday.

The said policeman was tagged as the one who shot PRH Lending Investors Incorporated owner Pilar Hernandez, 62, and her secretary Wevina Pancho, 55.

The firm only caters to policemen from Central Visayas.

Speculation surfaced that the incident might have been caused by a bad debt that the suspect could no longer pay or he was forbidden by the firm to apply for another loan.

Police believed that the suspect might be a policeman because the shells recovered from the crime scene came from a 9mm cal. pistol, a gun commonly issued to the police force.

Investigators conducted several police lineups, inviting policemen assigned in the city, province and even from neighboring provinces whose names sound like the one uttered by Hernandez before she died.

The lineups turned out nothing.

Police will be either filing two different charges against the suspect, a separate charge for robbery with homicide for the death of Hernandez and a murder charge for the death of Pancho.

Hernandez was shot several times in the head and body and bore one stab wound in her back, while Pancho also suffered several gunshot wound to her body and head.

Hernandez was celebrating her birthday that day. - Edwin Ian Melecio