Abducted Gino Padilla not the singer Kidnap victim’s kin eyeing 2 suspects

CAMP OLIVAS, Pampanga — Police confirmed yesterday that Gino Padilla is, indeed, missing, but he is not the singer-actor who did a softdrink commercial with famous American singer Tina Turner in the 1980s.

The missing Gino Padilla, seized from his family’s farm in Cuyapo, Nueva Ecija Friday night, is a half-brother of action star Robin Padilla. They are both sons of the late former Assemblyman and Camarines Norte Gov. Roy Padilla.

The kidnap victim’s family is eyeing two suspects behind the abduction, according to House Minority Leader Carlos Padilla, a cousin of the late governor.

The solon, however, said they were keeping the suspects’ identities in "strict confidentiality."

He asked the Philippine National Police to provide protection to the victim’s family, especially his mother, Jennifer.

Rep. Padilla, of Nueva Vizcaya, said the victim and his mother had been receiving death threats since last November.

A phone caller, the solon said, claimed that his group had been paid P400,000 to kill either the kidnap victim or his mother, or both.

Chief Inspector Danilo Fernando, police chief of Cuyapo town, told The STAR that five men, armed with Armalite rifles and pistols, burned the victim’s farmhouse, bodegas and a hand tractor in Barangay Bibitlat before fleeing with him at about 8 p.m. last Friday.

The kidnappers, he said, also fatally shot the victim’s caretaker, Sixto Degracia, in the head.

Degracia’s wife, Loreta, told investigators that they were told to lie on the ground while the farmhouse was on fire, and that her husband was shot with a caliber .45 pistol with a silencer.

She recalled that the victim had talked to the armed men before they torched the farmhouse.

"We don’t think it was a kidnap-for-ransom case," said Chief Superintendent Reynaldo Berroya, Central Luzon police director.

Berroya himself suspects that the kidnappers could either be members of the New People’s Army (NPA) or persons hired by adversaries of the victim’s family.

The Padillas own a 17-hectare farm in Barangay Bibitlat in Cuyapo town. The property, however, has been the subject of a dispute since 1999, Berroya said.

Singer-actor Gino Padilla went the rounds of TV showbiz talk shows yesterday to clarify that he was not the one abducted.