Moneylender's slay: Three more cops to be questioned

Three more policemen will be summoned to visit the Homicide Section in relation to the robbery with double homicide of a moneylender and her secretary inside their office along T. Padilla Extension, barangay Tejero, last Saturday.

Pilar Hernandez, 62, and Wevina Pancho, 55, were shot inside the PRH Lending Investment Inc. along T. Padilla Street by a man who entered their office. It was speculated that a policeman did the crime as no one could enter the office without passing through a door with an electronic lock controlled from the inside, and her firm catered mostly to policemen.

Also because the gun used, based on accounts of witnesses, was a 9mm cal. pistol, standard issue for some policemen.

The two policemen to be summoned today are assigned to Cebu Provincial Police Office and the other is a member of the Regional Mobile Group based in Sibonga town. The investigators assured the other day that the three will not be treated as suspects.

The Provincial Investigation and Intelligence Branch of the CPPO last Monday conducted a police lineup with only nine policemen present instead of the eleven invited. The two witnesses failed to identify the assailant from the policemen set in a single line fronting the PIIB office.

SPO2 Jay Yballe of the Homicide Section admitted they are just relying on the accounts of the witnesses who told them that the man who entered the firm with the victims looked like a policeman.

Investigators have not yet released the exact amount taken during the heist since nobody from the families of the victims has given an inventory of the lost articles.

Police believe that the assailant might be familiar with the victims since he was allowed inside.

PRH Lending Investment Inc. is where the policemen go in times of financial need, giving rise to speculation that the assailant could be a client with a very big debt to pay. -Edwin Ian Melecio/BRP