Cops identify TIP bomber

Police investigators believe they now have a principal suspect in the grenade-throwing incident at the Technological Institute of the Philippines (TIP) Thursday, which killed one student and wounded 44 others.

A source at the Central Police District (CPD) said police have launched a manhunt for a TIP alumnus who had been acting as an adviser to the Samahang Visaya (SV), one of the campus-based regional fraternities involved in a brawl shortly before the bombing incident.

Police officials said they were withholding the suspect's full identity pending his arrest. Police operatives are also tracking down two other suspects who are believed to have gone into hiding in the provinces.

The grenade thrower was described as about 30 years old, 5'4" to 5'7" tall, heavy built, with brown complexion and bedimpled.

The SV is a rival of the Samahang Ilocano (SI), the fraternity to which the lone fatality, 22-year-old Dhian Rey Navarro, belonged.

Police released on Friday artist's sketches of three suspects in the grenade-throwing incident.

TIP officials have expressed their willingness to cooperate with the police's efforts to arrest the suspects in the bombing, which happened in front of the school gate at around 3:40 p.m.

Senior Superintendent Napoleon Castro, CPD-Criminal Investigation Unit chief, said the probers' earlier theory that members of the SV were behind the bombing was bolstered by witnesses' testimonies that the suspects were overheard talking to each other in Cebuano before one of them lobbed the grenade near the school gate.

"Adtu na, adtu na (Go now, go now)," one of the suspects was quoted as saying to another.

Meanwhile, the father of Navarro threatened to sue TIP for his son's death. "They have failed in instilling discipline among their students," Diosdado Navaro said.

Police said the 22-year-old Navarro was a victim of heated rivalry between two fraternities. His relatives and friends said Navarro's group, the Samahang Ilocano, figured in a brawl last Wednesday night.

Navarro, a graduating mechanical engineering student, was recently elected president of the Confederation of Fraternities and Sororities at TIP. The group is an umbrella of registered fraternities and sororities, composed of 11 groups.

Navarro's job was to "mediate" between fraternity groups to avoid heated rivalries. Sources revealed that there are still several groups not registered with the confederation. -- With reports from Christina Mendez