2 cops killed in Central Mindanao within 16 hours

COTABATO CITY — Another policeman was killed in a gun attack in Central Mindanao before dawn on Tuesday, May 27, the second such incident in just 16 hours.

Police Sgt. Geoffrey Angub was walking along a street in Barangay Kalawag 2, Isulan, Sultan Kudarat, when a gunman repeatedly shot him with a pistol, killing him on the spot.

Lt. Col. Julius Malcontento, Isulan municipal police chief, and officials of the Sultan Kudarat Provincial Police Office told reporters on Tuesday morning that witnesses and community leaders had positively identified Angub’s killer as Vincent Dalanon, who is now the subject of an extensive manhunt.

Angub, a member of the municipal police force in Bagumbayan in Sultan Kudarat, was declared dead on arrival by physician Marc Robin Rendon in the nearby Sultan Kudarat Provincial Hospital, where emergency responders brought him for treatment.

Local officials and relatives of Angub, a resident of Sitio Bintana in Barangay Kalawag 2, told reporters that his brutal murder by Dalanon was likely driven by a personal grudge.

The killing of Angub followed a similar attack around noon on Monday, May 26, in Barangay Tunggol, Datu Montawal, Maguindanao del Sur, where Patrolman Jomar Madaliday Kalantungan was shot dead.

Kalantungan was in a roadside bakery in Datu Montawal when a man approached him casually, pulled out a pistol, shot him repeatedly and ran away. Like Angub, he also died immediately from bullet wounds he sustained in the attack.

Officials of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao had enlisted the support of local officials in Datu Montawal in identifying the killer of Kalantungan, a resident of Barangay Kayaga in Kabacan town in Cotabato, only about 10 kilometers away from where he was shot dead.