Senior Superintendent Sangacala Dampac, Cotabato City’s police director, said the gunmen, some of them disguised as policemen and armed with military-type assault rifles, could have raided one of the two houses here of Mayor Salipongan Dagloc, thinking he was there.
The gunmen, who arrived at the scene on board a Mitsubishi L-300 van, introduced themselves as policemen, casually entered Dagloc’s house and started searching for the mayor.
The suspects immediately raked with automatic weapons one of the rooms in Dagloc’s house after hearing someone talk inside.
But the one inside the room was a housemaid named Ging-ging Baludan, who died on the spot from gunshot wounds in different parts of her body.
Another maid, identified only was Johanna, was seriously wounded in the shooting frenzy.
Awakened by the sudden bursts of gunfire, Dagloc’s son, Datu Sebastian, managed to grab his firearm and engaged their attackers in the firefight.
Datu Sebastian was also wounded in the ensuing gunbattle.
Responding elements of the city police cornered one of the gunmen, Nasser Abdullah, who confessed to his being a resident of Kabuntalan, a town in the first district of Maguindanao.
"Apparently they were not aware that I was at my other wife’s residence," Dagloc said in the Maguindanaon vernacular. Muslims are allowed by their religion to have four wives.
Dagloc said he is certain that the gunmen who raided his hideout were sent to kill him by a bitter political adversary whom he defeated during last year’s May 11 mayoral race in Kabuntalan.
Kabuntalan is a known hideout of kidnappers and extortionists operating here and nearby towns, some of them with links to the notorious Pentagon kidnap-for-ransom gang. – John Unson