Cab driver hurt in ambush; student shot dead

CEBU, Philippines - A taxi driver was injured after an unidentified motorcycle-riding gunman shot him in the head after he overtook the latter at the Cebu South Road to rush his pregnant passenger, who was about to give birth, to the hospital yesterday dawn.

Antonio Fernandez, driver of D'Voyager Taxi, is already declared out of danger by the doctors at the Cebu City Medical Center where he was rushed after the shooting incident at 1:30 a.m. Saturday.

Fernandez was in a hurry because his passenger was already in the brink of giving birth but a slow-moving motorcycle blocked their way in Barangay Bulacao prompting the victim to honk the horn of his cab.

The victim managed to overtake the unidentified assailants riding in tandem but they were chased and fired upon. Fernandez was hit in the head prompting him to crash his taxi cab into a tree along the highway.

His pregnant passenger and two other companions were safe. The woman was taken to the St Anthony Mother and Child Hospital in Tagunol where she gave birth hours later while the taxi driver was rushed to CCMC.

The police are still investigating the incident and remain clueless as to the identities of the assailants.

Meanwhile, 16-year-old Joseph Reperio of Katipunan Street, Barangay Labangon, succumbed to a single gunshot wound in the chin after another motorcycle-riding gunman shot him yesterday afternoon.

The victim, a first year student of Don Sergio Osmeña Sr. Memorial High School, was with his two classmates along Salvador Extension when he got shot. Reperio had just brought home his girlfriend in sitio Englis, Guadalupe.

The victim was rushed by his friends to CCMC but he was declared dead on arrival. The responding policemen from Punta Police Station and the Mobile Patrol Group failed to catch the culprit. (FREEMAN)