2 killed, 5 injured in Baguio grenade blast

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines  – A repeat of a grenade explosion inside a computer shop by gangsters in late 2007, another grenade was lobbed against a group of youngsters dawn yesterday, two of whom are now dead.

Twenty-year-old Vio Joe Mendoza and Deo del Mundo, 21, died while being treated at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center, six hours after they were rushed together with five others due to serious shrapnel wounds from a fragmentation grenade. Suspects aboard a pick-up truck lobbed against them at around 3:30 a.m. yesterday along Leonard Wood Road.

The five others are: Rey Anthony Carino, 19; Raul Andrade, 21; Jerome Santos, 22; Mark Dave San Mateo, 23; and Lyndon Neocina, 23, all students.

Jocelyn Mendoza, mother of the 20-year-old victim is pleading authorities to fast-track the investigation and get to the bottom of this so that justice will be served. “Sana mahuli mga gumawa nito sa inosente kong anak,” she said sobbing.

Explosives and Ordnance experts said the grenade was an MKII-type fragmentation grenade, the same type lobbed against students inside a computer shop in November 2007 by gangsters because of a heightened rivalry between youth gangs in the city. At least 12 students were hurt during the incident including a notorious youth gang leader in the city.

Police who are investigating the incident initially bared that the victims were drinking along the famous “Stairs To The World” steps leading to Upper Session Road from Leonard Wood Road when another group passed by and lobbed the grenade.

Police are now tracking down the suspects who were reportedly aboard a pick-up truck.

Yesterday’s hostilities here once more brings to attention the still precarious situation between rival street gangs here that peaked three years ago when almost everyday, rival gangsters engaged each other violently even along major streets in the city.

The rivalries according to authorities have since died down when efforts by city officials and police “succeeded” to bring together young gang leaders and talk peace.

The seeming momentary lull of street-borne violence among gangsters in the city, however, has been broken as gangsters have brought their “wars” not anymore in the central business district zones but along the 129 barangays in the city.

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