Another Isabela village exec slain

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines – With the barangay elections barely two months away, another village official was gunned down in Isabela before dawn yesterday.

Police said Arnold Pastor, 47, chairman of Barangay Loria in Angadanan town, was killed along with wife, Leilanie, 45. The couple sustained multiple gunshot wounds.

Pastor was an ex-officio member of the municipal council, being the town’s Liga ng Barangay president.

Police said the Pastors had just come from a wake and were on their way home when their Toyota Hilux was peppered with .45-caliber bullets.

The killing was the second involving a village official in Isabela in less than two weeks. Last Aug. 24, Rafael Martinez, 47, a councilman of Barangay Centro East in Santiago City, was shot dead by motorcycle-riding men.

Martinez, who was reportedly planning to reclaim the village chairmanship in the Oct. 28 barangay polls, had just also come from a relative’s wake when he was shot several times with a .45-caliber pistol.

In Enrile, Cagayan, meanwhile, a village chief was shot and wounded during a drinking spree in his turf last week.

Police said Marion Manlincon, chairman of Barangay San Antonio, was having drinks with his councilmen in a friend’s house when the lone gunman approached them and asked who among them was “Kapitan Manlincon.”

Although drunk, Manlincon wasted no time and ran away while the unidentified man fired several shots at him with a .45-caliber pistol, hitting him in the back, and then fled aboard a motorcycle. – With Raymund Catindig, Cecille Suerte Felipe