Mining row eyed in Delano slay

A conflict involving mining operations at Compostela Valley could be behind Wednesday’s killing of the chief of staff of Rep. Manuel “Wai Kurat” Zamora, investigators from Quezon City Police District confirmed yesterday.

Superintendent Franklin Mabanag, chief of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit of QCPD, said they would go to Davao to pursue what they consider as the “strongest lead” in solving Robert Delano’s murder.

“We have learned that he (Delano) was tapped by Zamora to handle the issue involving an association of small miners in Mt. Diwalwal in Compostela Valley. And this is what we are pursuing for now,” Mabanag said in an interview.

The police official said their theory accounts for the calls from unregistered numbers on one of Delano’s two mobile phones a few minutes after the ambush.

“The way we see it, it seems as if the calls were made to check if he was really killed,” stressed Mabanag, who heads the police task force formed to solve Delano’s killing.

However, police clarified that they have not yet discounted other possible angles in the killing, including “his dealings in Congress as president of the association of chiefs of staff.”

But Mabanag said investigators are inclined to believe that the motive of the killing was “work-related” since “no personal angle has surfaced yet.”

Delano was about to leave his home in Barangay Kamuning in Quezon City Wednesday morning aboard his blue Toyota Fortuner when he was attacked by three unidentified assailants.

Two witnesses earlier described to police one of the suspects who shot Delano as a “slim, brown-skinned man about 5’5” to 5’6” tall.” Investigators have already released sketches of the gunman and one of the two lookouts.

The investigation, police officials said, is also focused on identifying the assailants. Mabanag believes the killers could be “professionals,” based on the manner they ambushed Delano.  — Edu Punay