Cops shoot down 2 suspects linked to Cotabato crimes

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Policemen shot dead two suspected killers-for-hire in separate encounters in Pikit town in Cotabato on Saturday morning, October 12.

Officials of the Pikit Municipal Police Station and the Cotabato Provincial Police Office separately told reporters on Saturday afternoon that the first to die in the two shootouts is Abdulwahab Payot, long under surveillance for motorcycle thefts and with his alleged involvement in a series of killings in the municipality.

A police team guarding a stretch of a road in Barangay Balong in Pikit first flagged him down only for a routine inspection and asked for the registration papers of his motorcycle when they noticed it running without a key.

Instead of complying peacefully, Payot pulled out a .45 caliber pistol, forcing the policemen who flagged him down to open fire, killing him on the spot.

Two residents of Pikit, Rommel Aban and Ariel Abrenica, were killed in separate gun attacks in the municipality just last Thursday.

More than 40 individuals had been killed in one attack after another in Pikit since 2022, all unsolved. Pikit is touted as the “crime capital of Cotabato province” owing to the seemingly unending killings in the area for three years now.

Another team of policemen had also killed a certain Borhan Usman in the town center of Pikit also on Saturday, about an hour after the encounter in Barangay Balong that resulted in the death of Payot.

Policemen were to frisk and inspect Usman for possible possession of a firearm when they noticed something bulging in his waist, but he resisted and provoked a gunfight that resulted in his death.