NBI heads probe of Cebu ambush

CEBU CITY — The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) will head the probe on Thursday night’s ambush-killing of the Cebu deputy collector for operations and an examiner of the Bureau of Customs.

City police chief Cecil Ezra Sandalo met with local NBI officials the other day to brief them on developments in the case.

Customs deputy collector for operations Eduardo Lao and examiner Bennet Sereno were on their way to Lao’s residence on board Lao’s blue Isuzu Trooper when two motorcycle-riding men waylaid them just a few meters away from Camp Sergio Osmeña Sr.

Stray bullets killed 16-year-old student Allen Dave Ravena and seriously injured jeepney driver Nestor Ancajas.

An NBI autopsy showed that Lao sustained at least seven gunshot wounds, mostly in the right side of his body.

The fatal wounds were the ones near his right ear, which caused intracranial hemorrhage, and in the chest where a bullet pierced through his thoracic cavity and lacerated his right lung. Another bullet hit his right arm and fractured his elbow.

Sereno was hit in the right posterior chest, the bullet entering his thoracic cavity and lacerating his right lung and the left atrium and left ventricle of his heart, causing his immediate death.

NBI medico-legal officer Rene Cam said Sereno was hit in the aorta, the biggest artery that carries blood from the heart to the body.

Cam said the gunmen could not have been less than 24 inches away when they fired at the two Customs officers, saying there were no products of combustion on the victims’ bodies. — Freeman News Service