Restaurant owner shot dead in Bataan

BALANGA CITY – Five suspected members of the New People’s Army operating in Southern Bataan towns shot dead a restaurant owner before Friday midnight in the upland village of Reformista, Limay town, this province.

Senior Superintendent Manuel Gaerlan, Bataan police director, identified the victim as Rodolfo Initorio, 54, owner of Tito Rudz Restaurant located along Roman Superhighway, Barangay Reformista, Limay.

Police report showed that the victim was inside his establishment at about 11 p.m. Friday when two heavily-armed men in camouflage uniforms introducing themselves as members of the local police force entered the eatery looking for the victim.

When Initorio was approaching the two unidentified gunmen, he was peppered by Armalite rifle and .45 caliber automatic pistol bullets at close range on the head and different parts of the body. The victim died on the spot from six gunshot wounds in the head and body.

Several customers who were still drinking beer during the shooting spree scampered out of the restaurant but they were warned by the gunmen to keep mum about the incident, then the suspected gunmen shouted three times “Mabuhay ang NPA.”

The gunmen casually walked-out of the restaurant and boarded a maroon-colored Toyota FX vehicle reportedly parked some 15 meters away from the restaurant entrance where their three other companions were waiting for them. The suspects reportedly fled under the cover of darkness to a coastal village of the adjacent town of Mariveles. – Raffy Viray