Traffic enforcer dies in second shooting attack

Motorcycle-riding men who went after Raquel Bensi, 37, remain unidentified. It’s the second shooting of a traffic officer in Lapu-Lapu City since August 2016, when CTMS head Frank Brazil survived a similar assault.

A few months ago, traffic enforcer Raquel Bensi escaped death when some would-be assailants’ guns failed to fire while he was manning road traffic in LapuLapu City. This time he was not so lucky. Bensi, 37, did not make it after unidentified gunmen again attacked last Friday night. The employee of the City Traffic Management System (CTMS) was on duty in Barangay Basak, near Tamiya, at 6:50 p.m. Friday when the two attackers arrived on a motorcycle. They wore helmets.

Senior Supt. Rommel Cabagnot, director of Lapu-Lapu City Police Office (LCPO), said traffic enforcers who have received threats must report these immediately to the police.

PO3 Lydo Pinos, investigator of LCPO Homicide Section, said they were looking at Bensi’s work as a possible motive.

Bensi had reportedly apprehended several drivers with colorum or illegal tricycles in Basak.

Pinos’s team checked the footage from closed-circuit television cameras in an establishment near the crime scene. But it wasn’t clear, and they’re trying to have it enhanced.

In a phone interview, Cabagnot said that Bensi was with a police officer who was also assigned in Tamiya.

However, the gunmen must have monitored the situation and waited while the policeman went to get a quick dinner, before they attacked. Cabagnot assigned additional policemen in Basak on top of the four officers that are regularly deployed there. He admitted, though, that the police cannot provide officers to work with each traffic enforcer.