Mayor’s hubby, bodyguard killed

ILOILO CITY, Philippines – The husband of a re-electionist town mayor and his bodyguard were killed when six armed men ambush them yesterday morning in Lemery town, Iloilo, in what the police surmised as possibly due to a land dispute.

John Apura, husband of Lemery town Mayor Ligaya Apura of the United Nationalist Alliance, was on a campaign sortie at Barangay Anabo with his bodyguard, alias Espaldon, and a driver when the incident happened.

Seconds after alighting from the vehicle, burst of gunfire from M16 and M14 rifles and machine pistol were heard all over the place. Shortly later, Mr. Apura and his companions were seen slumped on the pavement with gunshot wounds.

The three were rushed to the Sara District Hospital, but Mr. Apura and Espaldon were declared dead on arrival. The driver was later referred for hospital confinement in Iloilo City.

More than an hour after the incident, members of Lemery Police Station and the Iloilo Provincial Public Safety Battalion arrested Mario Cobarubias of Dumarao town in Capiz.

Chief Supt. Agrimero Cruz, Jr., director of Police Regional Office-6, said that witnesses pointed to Cobarubias as one of the six suspects who killed Mr. Apura and Espaldon.

Cobarubias, who turned out to be also wanted for a murder charge, yielded with an M14 rifle and two magazines and two hand grenades.

While investigation is going on, however Cruz refused to rule politics as behind the incident. “We received reports that it could be due to a land dispute,” he said.

If politics was behind the killing, it could be considered as the first election related-violence in Iloilo province.

Lemery was earlier tagged as one of 13 election watchlist of areas (EWAS) in Iloilo. On February 17, 2010, three months before the 2010 presidential polls, the farm tractor owned by the Apura couple was reduced into “skeletal remains” and ashes after it was torched by NPA rebels at Brgy. Pacuan in Lemery.

Some seven armed men arrived at the farm land of the Apuras and ordered tractor driver Cecilio Parreño to stop the farm vehicle and get his load of rice. They threw three grenades and an improvised explosive devise on the tractor but it failed to burn the farm vehicle. This prompted the suspects to douse gasoline on the equipment and set it on fire.

Police claimed that the couple’s failure to pay NPA’s demand of P50,000 every cropping may have triggered the incident. (FREEMAN)