Gunman finishes off victim in Tondo hospital

An armed man entered the public ward of a government hospital and shot dead a patient and seriously injured his caretaker past midnight yesterday in Tondo, Manila.

The same man was reportedly among a group who attacked patient Norven Nicol, 28, at dawn last Friday.

Nicol was recovering from a gunshot wound in the chest at the male surgical ward on the third floor of the Gat Andres Bonifacio Hospital when he was shot in the head at past 1:20 a.m. He was transferred to the Jose Reyes Memorial Medical Center (JRMMC), where he died.

Rodolfo Magcaling, 37, who was watching over the confined Nicol, was shot in the chest and arm. He is under observation at the JRMMC.

Police recovered three empty shells from a .22 caliber pistol in the hospital ward.

Before the attack, Nicol and Kenneth Franco, 18, were shot by armed men who got out of a dark-colored car at dawn last Friday in front of a junk shop along Road 10 in Tondo, according to Senior Police Officer 2 Edgardo Ko.

The two victims were confined in Room 306 with two other male patients. Magcaling slept on a vacant bed beside Nicol.

Magcaling identified the suspect in the two shootings as Enrique Bucad, alias Toto, 31, a neighbor of the victims at the Temporary Housing buildings along Road 10 in Tondo.

Hospital guards tried but failed to catch Bucad, who reportedly escaped in the same car used in Friday’s shooting. Ko noted that the diameters of Nicol’s gunshot wounds in the chest and head were similar, an indication that similar guns were used in the two incidents.

Chief Inspector Alberto Peco, who heads the homicide section of the Manila Police District, said revenge could be one of the motives for the shootings.

Police learned that robbers held up Bucad’s aunt, Elizabeth de los Santos, who owns E & J junkshop, last January and Nicol was one of the suspects. The allegation was never proven and this brought animosity between the two families, Peco said.

Police failed to find Bucad at his house. His mother told police that her son was delivering scrap materials in Bulacan when the attack at the hospital occurred.