P100,000 reward up for info on Tsinoy couple’s killers

A group of Filipino-Chinese businessmen offered a P100,000 yesterday reward for information that would help police identify and arrest the suspects in the slaying of a Chinese-Filipino couple in Quezon City last week.

The Chinese Filipino Business Club (CFBC) expressed alarm over the series of robbery-slays in the past weeks, including that of couple Ephraim Yao-Yang and his wife Gwendolyn, who were shot dead inside their vehicle at the Araneta Avenue-E. Rodriguez intersection last May 5.

The group asked Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Arturo Lomibao to intensify campaign against lawless elements.

"We are alarmed over the killing of civilians and journalists in the past weeks. This should serve as a wake up call," CFBC spokesman Daniel Laogan said.

Laogan said the CFBC, led by their president Rufino Kopio, set a meeting with Lomibao to personally request him to intensify the campaign against lawless elements to make citizens feel safe in the streets.

"Gen. Lomibao has confirmed his attendance to the meeting. We hope to raise all our concerns on peace and order and hopefully we can get answers and assurances," Laogan said.

Yao-Yang and his wife were stuck in traffic at the intersection when three-motorcycle-riding men shot them to get to the cash contained in a bag inside their Honda CRV .

The couple left behind a three-year-old daughter, whose future now remains uncertain, the CFBC said.

"The girl will grow up without the love of her parents. Who will take care of her, the couple was not rich. Ephraim worked as a computer programmer," Laogan said in an interview.

He noted that the wife did not have her immediate family in the Philippines as her parents and siblings decided to go back to China. "She (Gwendolyn) chose to live here, but look what happened?"

Sources said that prior to the robbery-slay, the couple had just withdrawn some P300,000 from a bank along Araneta Avenue.

Witnesses told probers that at the intersection, one of the suspects tapped his gun on the car’s window.

Gwendolyn quickly locked the car’s door, but the suspect broke the window with the butt of his gun then shot the couple.

"We want to give justice to the couple. Their deaths and those of journalists and other ordinary citizens should serve as a wake-up call to the PNP and to Gen. Lomibao to intensify the campaign against lawless elements," Laogan said.