Cop shot dead by suspected NPA hit men at Ormoc cockpit

ORMOC CITY — PO3 Antonio Delfin was on sick leave but he took time out to bet in a cockfight here Monday afternoon. He won but he lost his life.

Delfin, witnesses told investigators, had just come out of the Nadongholan cockpit after getting his winnings when two men, suspected to be communist hit men, fired shots at him.

The first gunman, said to be in his mid-20s, shot him in the head, and the second, in his late-30s, finished him off with two gunshots, also in the head.

They casually walked out of the cockpit and rode tandem on an unlicensed red Kawasaki Aura motorcycle. They sped away along with two others, possibly their lookouts, who were aboard a yellow motorbike.

According to Delfin’s live-in partner for 18 years Elizabeth, she was at the cockpit’s door, about 10 meters away from him, when she heard four successive gunshots. Police found four empty caliber .45 shells and a fragmented slug at the crime scene.

Delfin, 39, was assigned to the Region 6 police command in Iloilo City. He used to belong to this city’s police until the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) transferred him due to his alleged illegal drug activities.

Delfin was the second person to have been gunned down at the Nadongholan cockpit. Last Feb. 10, alleged drug trafficker Iñaki Guljuran was shot dead by four young communist hit men while watching a cockfight.

In a letter, the Mt. Amandawin Command of the New People’s Army’s Northern Leyte front, owned up to Guljuran’s killing.

The NPA command, in the same letter signed by one Ka Dodong Malaya, said Delfin topped its hit list.