2 suspects in Pangasinan mayor’s killing fall

LINGAYEN, Pangasinan, Philippines – Police arrested on Tuesday two suspects in the killing of Infanta town Mayor Ruperto Martinez and filed murder charges against them before the provincial prosecutor’s office.

“As far as the police are concerned, this is now a solved case but it is not yet closed because we will not stop until the masterminds are identified and arrested,” said Senior Superintendent Mariano Luis Verzosa Jr., acting provincial police director.

Of the two arrested suspects, witnesses tagged Richard Manuel as the triggerman, while Ricardo Legarda drove the getaway motorcycle when they shot Martinez with a .45-caliber pistol in his residential compound last Saturday afternoon.

Verzosa said they are eyeing a controversial mining pier project and politics as possibly behind the killing.

“That (mining pier issue) is where the problem evolved,” he said. A few hours before the killing, some 600 residents staged a protest rally against the construction of the pier where nickel from Zambales would be brought.

Verzosa said police intelligence agents monitored the two suspects in a resort in nearby Dasol town where they checked in aboard an unlicensed motorcycle that fitted the description of the motorcycle used by Martinez’s killers.

The two were eventually apprehended after a brief chase when they failed to stop at a police checkpoint along the national highway in Barangay Macalang, Dasol town. However, no guns were seized from them.

Verzosa gave assurance that the two suspects are not fall guys, saying that witnesses, three of them minors, positively identified them, as they wore no helmets when they allegedly shot Martinez dead.

Verzosa said Infanta town would be among their priority areas of concern in next year’s elections, along with Urbiztondo, Agno, Sta. Maria, San Manuel, Malasiqui, Rosales, and Balungao towns and the cities of Alaminos, Dagupan and San Carlos.