Cops identify gunmen in ambush

Northern Police District operatives are now hot on the trail of at least eight suspects in the ambush Thursday of a Malabon fish trader that resulted in the death of five people .

Police said they have identified six of the gunmen in the robbery attempt in Barangay Tenejeros.

"Three crack teams are now hunting down the suspects as we have identified at least six of them," Malabon City police chief Senior Superintendent Moises Guevarra told The STAR.

Malabon police have gathered incriminating pieces of evidence left behind in neighboring Barangay Catmon by escaping members of the group immediately after the shootout.

Guevarra said leads should point to those involved in the attack that resulted in the death of five, one of them an unidentified suspect and perceived leader of the group, and the wounding of two women, fish dealer Alicia Ordinario herself and her assistant Rosenda Orantino.

In a three-page report to Guevarra, investigation chief Inspector Jorge Tabayag said they received information that three of the unidentified suspects fled towards Sitio 6 Dumpsite Area in Barangay Catmon, Malabon and forcibly entered the house of one Rose Villa Pacquiao-Broniola.

Guevarra quickly dispatched a follow-up team to Broniola’s house, but found no suspects.

Recovered from the house were a green nylon wallet containing a list of cell phone numbers of different personalities, a 1x1 photo of an unidentified male believed to be one of the suspects, a SIM card, a personal identification number and a PIN unblocking key, a gray baseball cap and two bloodstained bath towels that indicated some of the suspects were wounded.

Broniola told probers the suspects forced their way into her house, changed into a fresh set of clothes before fleeing on foot. She said the items the police found belonged to the suspects.

A concerned citizen, told probers that before the ambush, he saw two unidentified males in maong pants walking toward where he and a friend were standing just across an area for pedicabs.

At first he thought the suspects were ordinary passengers, but the two then drew their firearms and fired several shots at the victims’ vehicles.

Police also said a female member of the group allegedly acted as a lookout.

A female survivor of the carnage, Maricris Ordinario-Cruz, 36, a niece of Ordinario, who was celebrating her 53rd birthday when ambushed that day, narrated her account in a statement sworn to before PO2 Benjamin Megio.

She is currently under the protective custody of the Malabon police.

Police also admitted making a mistake in saying Ordinario’s assistant, Rosenda Gutierrez-Orantino died Thursday night while being treated in an undisclosed hospital.

The inaccurate information was blamed on the confusion in the gathering of data during the initial phase of the investigation. The police made an effort to correct the information at around 10 p.m. last Thursday.

Ordinario and Orantino are reportedly in stable condition and fast recovering from their injuries in undisclosed hospitals.

This developed as police yesterday said one more victim previously unaccounted for in the attack has died while being treated for a gunshot wound in the body.

PO3 Benedicto Zafra, Malabon police investigator, told The STAR Wilfredo Minlay, a deck hand in charge of weighing at the "consignacion" in Malabon, succumbed to a bullet in the right of the upper body that lodged at the left chest.

The wounded Minlay, who was on board the black Starex van during the shootout, walked off from the ambush site unnoticed when the smoke cleared.

Zafra said Minlay was later taken to the Valenzuela General Hospital and later was transferred to the East Avenue Medical Center in Quezon City where he expired at around 2:45 p.m. that same day.

PO2 Benjamin Megio said the final list of fatalities included Benjamin Plopino; an alias "Jon-jon Notorious" the tattooed helper, both in the Nissan Sentra and Michael Gabat, bodyguard, and Minlay, who were in the Starex van, all workers of Ordinario.

The fifth casualty was the still unidentified gunman and believed leader of the group that ambushed Ordinario’s party.

Ambush in Tenejeros

Ordinario-Cruz, whose mother is an elder sister of the trader, told The STAR that 11 of them (six in the Starex, five, including herself, in the Sentra) were in a two-car convoy that left the Malabon fish port on Estrella street at around 9:30 a.m. on their way home to Valenzuela City.

She said they were to drop off Ordinario in her house in Barangay Coloong in Valenzuela as was their routine.

She said another worker who was in the Starex, alighted in Catmon. Her sister-in-law Alma, wife of her brother Gabriel both on the Starex, asked her to transfer from the Sentra which she did. Also with her on the Starex were Gabat, Minlay and her elder brother Edmundo, who drove the van.

The brother had driven the two women to the hospital in the bullet-riddled Sentra after the shooting.

Probers said as the convoy slowed down on Sanchez street intersecting the busy M.H. Del Pilar in Tenejeros, two suspects with handguns blocked their path and shot Plopino and Jon-jon at pointblank range, killing them on the spot.

SWAT operatives said they found in the possession of the dying suspect a caliber .38 revolver with four live rounds and one emply shell in the cylinder and three sheets of short bond paper that contained sketches of the ambush. The suspect died later at the Pagamutang Bayan ng Malabon with a gunshot wound in the right chest.

Yesterday morning, police got word some persons were interested in claiming the suspect’s body at the Eusebio Funeral Homes. Guevarra immediately ordered his men to "invite" the cocnerned persons to come to the police station to shed light on the dead man’s involvement in the ambuscade. – With Pete Laude