Angeles City election officer gunned down

ANGELES CITY — The assistant registrar of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) here was shot dead by a ski mask-wearing man while he was grilling food for his five house guests, all fellow Comelec officers, last Friday night.

The victim, Fonciano Palo, 60, died from a gunshot wound in the back, with the bullet exiting through his left armpit, said Senior Superintendent Jimmy Restua, city police chief.

Probers said Palo was grilling food for his fellow Comelec officers, including registrar Cora Jane Valero, at a store outside his residence at L&S Subdivision when the gunman shot him with a caliber .45 pistol.

At Palo’s wake at a chapel in the City of San Fernando, Valero told reporters that she could have been the gunman’s target.

Valero said Palo was hit as he moved between her and the gunman while attending to his grilling.

Restua said communist rebels could not have been involved in the killing, noting that the insurgents never hide their faces using ski masks and even identify themselves as belonging to the New People’s Army.

Tricycle drivers near the crime scene said they saw the gunman flee on board a motorcycle.

"At this point, we neither have a suspect nor a motive," Restua said.

Irish Calaguas, spokesman of Mayor Carmelo Lazatin, described Palo as a "silent man."

The local Comelec office is still busy supervising the revalidation of old voters. So far, only 7,000 out of the city’s 120,000 voters have gone to the Comelec office for revalidation.

At least two candidates are vying for Angeles City mayor next year: Gov. Lito Lapid, who is on his third and final term, and his friend, Barangay Cutcut chairman Robin Nepomuceno of the Nationalist People’s Coalition.

But a bill slated for third hearing in the Senate that will create a new congressional district composed of Mabalacat and Magalang towns, may compel Lazatin to drop his plans to run for Congress and seek a third term as mayor.