Engineer eyeing Albay mayoral post shot dead

LEGAZPI CITY, Philippines – A Makati City engineer was gunned down by three still unidentified men yesterday morning while he was going out of a chapel in Malinao, Albay where he was a sponsor in a wedding ceremony.

Superintendent Renato Bataller, Bicol police spokesman, said engineer Nelson Morales, a brother of incumbent Malinao Vice Mayor Alice Morales, was rushed by responding policemen to the Cope Hospital in Tabaco City where he passed away at around 1:45 p.m.

Bataller said Morales was shot in the abdomen by one of the three men armed with short firearms. The gunmen had come from three different roads leading to the chapel in Barangay Estancia, Malinao town.

The slain engineer was reportedly planning to run for Malinao mayor in next year’s midterm elections.

Vice Mayor Morales, who was also a wedding sponsor with his brother, said a close-in security aide of his brother, retired Army soldier Raul Capitan, was also shot when he tried to retaliate. Capitan was brought to Aquinas Hospital here.

The vice mayor said she, too, was shot, but another aide of her brother managed to push her to the ground to avoid being hit.

“I was also shot by one of the suspects. But the aide of my brother shove me to the ground,” Morales said in a radio interview.

Malinao is one of the Bicol towns tagged as hot spots in past elections.

In the 2010 polls, Bataller recalled that the Army stationed a tank in Malinao to defuse political tension in the municipality.