Baguio newsman’s killer gets life term

BAGUIO CITY – A member of the breakaway faction of the Cordillera People’s Liberation Army escaped the death penalty and was meted only a life jail term for the killing of newsman Rey Pedronio in June last year, because prosecutors failed to establish the date and time that he plotted the murder.

Convicted was Abel Mamma, alias Masson, a close-in bodyguard of former Bucloc, Abra mayor Mailed Molina who, together with former newsman Abrino Aydinan, broke away from the CPLA headed by the late priest-turned-rebel Conrado Balweg in the mid-1980s.

Pedronio was the board secretary of the Cordillera Regional Assembly, the policy-formulating body of the Cordillera Administrative Region, when he was shot dead.

Mamma was ordered to indemnify Pedronio’s family a total of P2.6 million, of which P2.216 million represents the income Pedronio could have earned if he were alive. — Aurora Alambra