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on reports, the victims had just withdrawn more than a million pesos from a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.