GUNMAN IN 2004 KALINGA JUDGE SLAY GETS 40 YEARS

QUEZON, ISABELA—Seventeen years after the killing of Judge Milnar Lammawin in Tabuk City, Kalinga province, the gunman was convicted of murder and was sentenced to reclusion perpetua or a maximum of 40 year in prison.

Tabuk Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 25 Judge Jerson Angog found Wilfredo Signabon “guilty beyond reasonable doubt” for killing Lammawin on Aug. 9, 2004.

Signabon was also ordered to pay P350,000 in civil, moral, exemplary and temperate damages to the heirs of Lammawin, in the court ruling dated Jan. 19, a copy of which was recently furnished to the Inquirer.

Signabon’s coaccused— Bennit Wandag, Peter Lingbawan and several John Does— remained at large.

During the trial that began in 2012, prosecution witnesses testified that Signabon and Wandag repeatedly shot Lammawin while the judge was standing near a pickup. Lammawin was then the presiding judge of RTC Branch 25 in Tabuk and was in his early 50s when he was killed.

Treachery

Witnesses claimed Signabon still shot Lammawin several times even as the judge was already lying on the ground.

The court cited treachery as an aggravating circumstance that proved Lammawin was murdered, noting that the victim was at his “most vulnerable position” when he was shot and that he could not have anticipated the attack.

“The shooters made sure Judge Lammawin cannot put up any defense on his person. The attack was sudden,” the ruling added.

It also said the killing was premeditated since witnesses saw Signabon and Wandag waiting at a bakeshop near the crime scene before Lammawin was gunned down.

The court also rejected Signabon’s claim that he was at Barangay Maducayan in Natonin town, Mountain Province, when the killing took place.

Lammawin belonged to the Magnao-Guilayon tribe in Tabuk and a conflict among the tribesmen was earlier tagged as a motive behind the killing.

At that time, he was the second judge to be killed in the Cordillera region since 2003.

On May 17, 2003, municipal trial court judge Pinera Biden was gunned down by four men, who were later arrested, while he was checking his vehicle in front of his house in Conner town, Apayao province.