Pampanga bet suspects he’s real target of mistaken kidnap

MASANTOL, Pampanga , Philippines   â€“ The re-electionist vice mayor of this town has sought police help as he suspects that he was the real target of five armed men who snatched a resident last April 30 but freed him for being the wrong guy.

Vice Mayor Bajun Lacap, who is running under the Liberal Party, told Senior Superintendent Oscar Albayalde, provincial police director, that ski mask-wearing men seized a certain Emmanuel Bonifacio at around 7:30 p.m. last April 30.

Bonifacio, according to Lacap, was dragged into a van, blindfolded and beaten up when he resisted, and the kidnappers drove off apparently toward Macabebe town.

Bonifacio recalled that his blindfold was removed when they reached a certain place and that the armed men pointed a flashlight to his face. “I heard somebody (saying) that I was the wrong person,” he was quoted as saying.

Bonifacio recounted that he was blindfolded again and made to ride the van, and was abandoned in Sitio Lutgarda in Macabebe. Nothing was reportedly taken from him.

Lacap believes that he was the kidnappers’ real target. “Bonifacio was of my build. He was (snatched) in the same place and in the usual time that I normally board a passenger boat for home on the other side of the Pampanga River,” he said.

He told police that two days before Bonifacio was seized, the boatmen had warned him that four men on two motorcycles were asking for his whereabouts.

“On the third day I changed my routine and that was when the (kidnapping) happened,” he said.

Lacap, running mate of LP mayoral bet Dan Guintu, suspects that this apparent threat to his safety is politically motivated.