Alvarado to PNP: STOP THE KILLINGS

By Dino Balabo

MALOLOS CITY—Gov. Wilhelmino Alvarado issued over the weekend marching orders to the Bulacan police to stop the spate of killings in the province. 

The killings which started before the May 13 polls left at least six persons including two village chairmen, a businessman and his wife.

“We cannot allow the killings to go unpunished,” Alvarado said in an interview, adding that he orders to Senior Supt. Joel Orduna, acting provincial police director, to undertake “immediate and definitive action.”

The governor said that the killings appeared to have a pattern. The village chair from San Miguel town was killed days before the elections, while in Balagtas town, Ernesto Ventura, the village chief of Barangay Santol, was shot to death earlier this week.Both cases involved assailants on board motorcycles.

“The pattern is clear, the suspects are riding in tandem,” he said.

Similar pattern is reported in the killing of a businessman and his wife in Malolos City on Monday afternoon.

Based on reports, the victims had just withdrawn more than a million pesos from a bank when they were ambushed at the Blas Ople Road here on their way home to Hagonoy town.

According to Alvarado, the police are looking at the “possible connection” in the cases.

He said that the suspects in an earlier killing in Meycauayan City were nabbed in the province of Laguna.

“The Bulacan Provincial Police Office are also looking at the modus operandi including the robberyand murder case in Calumpit,” Alvarado said.

When asked if he is planning to relieve local police officers for negligence of duty, the governor said that the election ban prohibition is still active.

“Even if we wanted to relieve some officers, there is still the election ban,” he said, but stressed that “criminals cannot be bolder than our law enforcers.”

Earlier this week, a teenager from Baliwag town was beaten up by suspected drug addicts in Plaridel town.

The boy died four days later from severe head injuries.