Two killed in separate incidents within 9 hrs

Two people were killed in separate incidents in the city, within a span of nine hours, from last Saturday evening to yesterday dawn.

The first incident was on Saturday evening in sitio Mapa, barangay Tagbao, where Mariano Gabutin, a farmer, was shot dead by an unidentified assailant while seated on a bench outside the house of a neighbor.

Nobody saw the incident in that dark and secluded area but homicide investigator Jojo Ursaiz said it could not be linked to the so-called vigilante slayings.

Ursaiz said the police are looking at personal grudge as the possible motive, especially with stories coming out that Gabutin had a number of enemies as he was wont to challenge anyone to a fistfight whenever he was drunk.

Gabutin was married but his wife and children left him years ago allegedly because they could no longer bear the beatings he inflicted on them.

Neighbors told the police that they first heard three successive gunshots and when one of them, Roger Supilan, went out to check, he found Gabutin already dead with several gunshot wounds in his abdomen, right arm and left thigh.

Police are still on the case while the victim's cadaver is now at a funeral parlor in the city.

About nine hours later at 4 a.m. yesterday, a 17-year-old boy was stabbed in his back after he was done dancing inside a benefit disco in sitio Magtalisay, barangay Mabolo.

The victim was immediately taken to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center but failed to reach there alive.

Witnesses had pointed at 34-year-old Sherwin Maraba as the alleged assailant who stabbed the teenager for no clear reason except his rumored envy over the victim's dancing abilities.

Investigators said Maraba, who escaped after the incident, has been linked to some stabbing incidents in the past but he has been very elusive. - Ryan P. Borinaga