Pangasinan mayor shot dead

TAYUG, Pangasinan — This town’s mayor and a cockpit caretaker were killed and seven others were wounded in a pre-dawn attack yesterday, police said. Communist rebels were believed behind the incident.

Investigation showed that Mayor Guerrero Zaragoza, 61, was attacked while he was about to leave the Tayug Coliseum, a cockpit arena, in Barangay Toketec at about 2:45 a.m.

The mayor died on the spot from gunshot wounds in the left eye and the abdomen. Also killed was Wilfredo Hidalgo, caretaker of the cockpit arena.

Police found 101 empty M-16 Armalite shells and 14 spent Carbine rifle shells at the scene.

Chief Inspector Raymund Gilbert Luzano, Tayug police chief, identified the seven wounded as SPO2 Segundo Seriosa, one of the mayor’s bodyguards who was hit in the left shoulder; municipal secretary Leopoldo Serrano, and civilians Edwin Belen, Merlito Apiasa, Alberto Ponsaba, Remedios Morillo and Mario Queban.

Two other security aides of the mayor, SPO1s Carlo Lichoco and Primitivo Fonseca, escaped unhurt because they went out of the cockpit arena ahead of the mayor.

Police said the gunmen, numbering at least five, fired their guns for about 15 minutes, and then fled toward a ricefield.

Luzano said Zaragoza was seen holding a gun. But the firearm and the bag containing his prize money in the cockfight reportedly amounting to hundreds of thousands of pesos were missing; police recovered only about P40,000.

The mayor’s daughters, Rochelle Zaragoza-Belen, president of this town’s Liga ng mga Barangay, and Rowena Zaragoza-Belen, former mayor of Natividad town, said they had warned their father to be more security-conscious since he had received death threats in the past.

"Noon pa, may mga death threats na siya. Pero matigas ang ulo niya kasi sabi niya wala naman siyang alam na kasalanan (He had had death threats before. But he was hard-headed because he said he was not aware of any wrongdoing that he had committed)," Belen said.

The Provincial Mobile Group, headed by Chief Inspector Ricardo Revita, had reportedly informed the Zaragozas years ago that they had uncovered documents purportedly from the New People’s Army detailing the alleged "sins" against the people of the mayor and his relatives.

Bernabe said his father was mistaken to be a tough guy but that he was not. "He was very helpful to the poor. He only talked very loud and that was misinterpreted as something else," she said.

Bernabe said they are not discounting the possibility that politics was involved in her father’s killing.

Zaragoza, whose family owns the Zaragoza Colleges here, was appointed mayor in 1986. He ran in 1987 and won, serving until 1998. He rested for one term, and got elected anew in 2001.

His elder brother, former vice mayor Aureo Zaragoza, was also gunned down on June 22, 1980. — With Cesar Ramirez and Christina Mendez