2 more brgy execs in Samar killed

TACLOBAN CITY — Three days after Barangay Chairman Edgar Billeza was gunned down inside his residential compound at Carayman in Calbayog City, two more barangay officials, this time in Barangay Dagum of the same city, were shot dead yesterday morning.

Samar Police provincial director Senior Superintendent Nolasco Bathan identified the latest victims as Rio Lebario village chief of Dagum and Councilman Jonie Lungsod, both known political leaders of the late Representative Reynaldo Uy who was also killed on May 1, 2011.

Lebario and Lungsod were about to leave the Barangay Hall when the assailants came up and shot the two at close range. They were declared dead on arrival at the Calbayog District Hospital, after sustaining eight gunshot wounds from an M16 armalite rifles fired by the assassins.

The killing of the two barangay officials raised to 21 the number of murdered political leaders and barangay officials in the 1st district of Samar, from the past year until the preceding four months this year.

Last week, or days before the killing of Billeza in Carayman on Sunday, Barangay Chairman Juanito Diaz, of Nagpapacao in Matuguinao town of Samar, was also killed by unidentified attackers.

All these killings have remained unsolved to this day, and Bathan said the police are now still conducting investigation that would lead to the identification and arrest of the assailants. He then called on the people to help the police by providing any information that would result in the resolution of the incidents.

Representative Mel Senen Sarmiento (1st district, Samar), in a talk with The FREEMAN, was very emotional upon learning the killing of the two barangay officials. He said Samarnons have been known to be peace-loving people and he was stunned on why some would choose to kill others.

Sarmiento called on the leadership of the Police Regional Office-8 to seek for help from the military, or the 8th Infantry Division, and the National Bureau of Investigation, to address these killings.

"I cannot imagine that 80 policemen in Calbayog can properly secure even a 90hectare area of the city. The PRO-8 recently deployed 200 policemen to the area, and I am hoping that this matter could solve the problem in the soonest time possible,” said the congressman.

PRO-8 director, Chief Superintendent Asher Dolina, yesterday said: "We are on the process of coordinating with our partners in the military, and conduct anticriminality operations, because this (spate of killings) is already quite alarming."

Dolina said assessment of the killings will be tackled during the Regional Peace and Order Council Meeting in the first week of June. He said the motives must be determined, considering the pattern of unidentified men killing political leaders and barangay officials.

An anti-violence group in Calbayog also voiced concern over the failure of authorities to arrest, prosecute and convict the killers and their mastermind.