DAR worker gunned down

COTABATO CITY – Two men shot dead the other night a key staffer of a special project in Central Mindanao of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), exactly five years after the victim had survived an attack by suspected guns-for-hire.

Chief Inspector Leo Ajero, Kidapawan City police chief, said the victim, Wilfredo Puno, 53, a resident of Arakan, North Cotabato, worked for a special DAR project dubbed Support to Agrarian Reform Communities in Central Mindanao.

Ajero said Puno was on his way to his office when the gunmen, positioned near the old barracks of the defunct Philippine Constabulary, fired at him with caliber .45 pistols and then fled on board motorcycles.

Ajero said investigators are convinced that Puno’s killing had something to do with his job and was related to the first attempt on his life in the town proper of Arakan in 2000, which resulted in the death of his wife.