Suspect killed, cop hurt in police station shootout

A suspected member of a gunrunning syndicate was killed while a police officer was critically wounded in a shootout inside a police sub-station last Friday in Caloocan City.

Chief Inspector Jose Ramirez Valencia, Caloocan City police investigation branch chief, identified the fatality as Jonathan Hizon, 38, a resident of 105 Bagumbayan street, Libis, Quezon City.

Hizon sustained multiple gunshot wounds in different parts of the body. He died on the way to the Tala General Hospital in Caloocan City North.

PO3 Hector Ortencio, assigned at Police Community Precinct 11/Sub-station 3 in Tala, is now confined at the FEU Hospital in Fairview, Quezon City due to a gunshot wound in the right side of his abdomen.

Valencia said that at around 6:30 p.m., a team from the PCP 11, led by Inspector Leonilo Padulaga, flagged down a white Mitsubishi Lancer (DRA-313) at a checkpoint on Ilang-Ilang street in Tala, Caloocan City North.

Padulaga and his team, composed of PO3 Hector Ortencio, PO2 Abner Butay, PO2 Emilio Boyoten and PO2 Arnulfo Dancel, said the passengers —three male and one female — were acting suspicious.

Police invited the occupants to their sub-station at LD Village in Barangay 186, Tala.

As the officers were preparing for the inquiry inside the station, one of the passengers, later identified as Hizon, pulled out a caliber .45 pistol from his brown shoulder bag and fired at Ortencio.

The officer was hit in the abdomen.

Though wounded, Ortencio fired back at Hizon, hitting him several times in different parts of the body.

According to SPO4 Raymundo Listangco, Hizon’s companions took advantage of the shootout and tried to flee but two of them, identified as Lino Young, 27, a resident of Bagong Silang, Caloocan, and Lex Reves, 38, of Calauan, Pasig City, were apprehended.

Their unidentified female companion escaped.

SPO2 Nelson Boga-boga of the Northern Police District-Scene of the Crime Operation (NPD-SOCO) team said two caliber .38 revolvers with several bullets were recovered inside the suspects’ car.

"We are not discounting the possibility that they are members of a gunrunning syndicate based on the evidence on hand, but that remains to be established," Boga-boga told The STAR.