2 witnesses flee Masbate

LEGAZPI CITY — A couple, who claimed to have witnessed the Dec. 2 killing of a hard-hitting Masbate broadcaster, have fled the province, forcing the police to release a man the spouses tagged as the assassin.

Superintendent Romeo Mapalo, Masbate police director, told The STAR that probers invited the man for interrogation after the couple claimed that they saw him gunning down radioman Nelson Nadura.

Nadura, 42, was shot by two men as he was about to start his motorcycle a few meters away from Masbate City radio station dyME where he had hosted a political commentary for three years.

Mapalo, however, said the couple did not show up to identify the man in a police line-up.

The other witnesses, he said, failed to pinpoint the man as one of Nadura’s two attackers.

Mapalo said they later learned that the couple had fled Masbate and are reportedly in Metro Manila.

"Of course, we cannot hold the (man) in the absence of hard testimony against him by witnesses," he said.

Mapalo said a task force formed to solve the Nadura killing is now locating the couple to convince them to cooperate in the investigation.

"Since they claimed that they actually saw the killing, their testimonies could be very vital to the solution of the case," he said.

Chief Superintendent Jaime Lasar, Bicol police director, said his men are working hard to solve the murder.

"But, of course, we cannot arrest just anyone without strong evidence. This is the reason why the Nadura probers did not attempt to hold (the man) any further after the witnesses failed to identify him," Lasar said.

Nadura used to be a former commander of the New People’s Army, the armed unit of the Communist Party of the Philippines, in Masbate until he availed himself of the government’s amnesty program in 1998, the same year he entered the broadcast media.