Man gunned down at Pier 6

A 34-year-old man was gunned down in front of his common-law wife by a still unidentified man who was reportedly waiting for him at the corner of First Street and A.S. Baklig Avenue in Pier 6 of barangay Mabolo yesterday morning.

The fatality, Roland Rico Teves, a resident of San Carlos Heights in barangay Quiot, had three gunshot wounds in the right side of his body and nape. His 29-year-old spouse tried to take him to a hospital but he failed to reach there alive.

The wife, who was four-month pregnant of their third child, told police investigators that Teves asked her to go with him to the pier to meet someone who she did not know.

Homicide investigator SPO3 Zenaido Pastorfide said Teves drove their motorcycle with his wife in going to the supposed meeting place. They reached there but then the man was not there yet prompting Teves to drive to an eatery near the place to eat instead.

They later returned to the meeting place but upon reaching a corner, the cellphone of Teves rang. His wife was not sure if it was a call or a text message alert but then Teves stopped to answer it.

She said that when they stopped by the road side, she alighted from the motorcycle to fix her pants but then an unidentified man suddenly approached and shot Teves several times.

Teves fell from his motorcycle while the gunman casually walked to cross McArthur Boulevard toward a mall nearby. Investigators believed that the assailant may have companions and a getaway vehicle waiting there.

Scene of the Crime Operations policemen found from the crime scene two shells of a .45 caliber bullet, a deformed slug, and a medium-size pack of suspected shabu wrapped in white paper, the ownership of which the police could not determine yet for now.

The victim's cellphone, that might have contained the last message of the man he was about to meet or who he was communicating with before the attack, was no longer found, said the police.

The wife said that Teves was engaged before in a car buy-and-sell business but had no permanent job presently, said Pastorfide.

Another homicide investigator, SPO2 Desiderio Mendaros, said that the illegal drugs angle would be included in their investigation of the killing. - Edwin Ian Melecio/RAE