Woman in Mandaue drug list shot, killed

CEBU, Philippines - A woman, whose name appears in the Mandaue City Police Office drug watchlist, was shot and killed instantly by two men wearing helmets inside the premises of her home in Sector 7, barangay Pagsabungan, Mandaue City yesterday morning.

Juliet Retuerto, 47, married, and a resident of the place was having coffee yesterday morning when soon after she went out of the house to open the gate for two men who had arrived on a motorcycle.

Police said Retuerto must have known the men since the family does not normally open the gate for strangers.

While Retuerto and the two men were conversing, her daughter and a sister-in-law heard gunshots, and saw two men leaving on a black motorcycle with no plate number.

Retuerto sustained gunshot wounds on her forehead, chest, neck, and left shoulder which killed her on the spot.

The police found slugs of a .45 caliber pistol at the crime scene.

Seventy meters away from the victim’s house, habal-habal drivers saw the two men tossing a white envelope into a canal. After retrieving the envelop, they found that it contained several pieces of photocopied P1,000 bills.

SPO3 Edgardo Pasaylo of the Basak police station theorized that the photocopied P1,000 bills were used in drug deals and that the killing could possibly be traced to illegal drug transactions. 

Pasaylo said Retuerto and her husband’s names both appear in MCPO’s drug watchlist.

Retuerto’s husband was arrested two months ago by the City’s Anti Illegal Drugs Special Operations Task Force(CAIDSOTF) and is now at the Mandaue City jail.

After her husband’s arrest , Retuerto took charge of the family’s illegal drug trade business.

Pasaylo said Retuerto could have been killed for failing to remit the proceeds of her sales.

On the other hand, another police source who requested anonymity yesterday said that prior to Retuerto’s death, she had received several death threats.

Retuerto’s daughter handed to the police a notebook where the victim wrote down all the death threats that she had received since 2008, and the last entry being the one that came only this week.

The death threats were mined from Retuerto’s cellular phone after which she transferred these to a notebook, including the sender’s cellular phone numbers and the dates the messages were received. (FREEMAN NEWS)