Politics, business rivalry eyed in Leyte mayor’s slay

TACLOBAN CITY — Police are looking into politics and business rivalry as possible angles in Thursday’s ambush-killing of the mayor of Hindang, Leyte in Cebu City.

Mayor Roy Jumao-as, 57, and his son, Jake, 25, were gunned down shortly after getting down from a taxi in front of their rented apartment at the corner of D. Jakosalem street and Gen. Maxilom Avenue.

Leyte police chief Diosdado Lelis, interviewed on radio station dySS, said he has learned that as early as three weeks ago, the re-electionist mayor had been receiving death threats which he just ignored.

Greg Jumao-as, a cousin of the slain mayor, suggested the motive behind the killing could either be related to politics or business.

The mayor is actually a Cebuano and moved only to Hindang because his wife hails from there. He served as a policeman in Cebu City, and resigned in 1987 to start a lending business.

Police said Jumao-as had just arrived in Cebu City and was fetched at the port by his son.

As father and son got out of the taxi, two men drinking at a store near their apartment offered them drinks and the mayor, apparently because he was a politician and was eager to please, obliged.

As he did so, two other men appeared and gunned him down and his son.

As Jumao-as and his son fell on the pavement, their attackers, both wearing denim shorts with one in white t-shirt and the other in a red shirt, finished them off with more shots from their caliber .45 pistols, then calmly walked away to an apparently waiting taxi.

The assailants appeared extremely confident that they did not bother to wear ski masks or attempt to hide their faces.

Bystanders brought the mayor and his son to the Velez General Hospital, the nearest medical facility. Jake was dead on arrival, while his father expired a few minutes later.

Jumao-as bore gunshot wounds in the chest while his son was hit in the shoulder, abdomen and knee. Eleven empty caliber .45 shells and a slug were found at the crime scene.

Barangay Zapatera chairman Francisco Benedicto said nobody recognized the attackers so they could not be barangay residents.

He suspects the two men, who had been drinking and offered drinks to the mayor and his son, were also not from the place and could be accomplices.

The owner of the store where the first two men had been drinking said she neither recognized the assailants nor witnessed the shooting outside her store.

Benedicto, however, claimed he now has a witness under his custody.

Last Feb. 28, the mayor of Tarangan, Samar, Anieto Olaje, was gunned down inside a cockpit arena in Calbayog City. A suspect, Arnold Billeza, was arrested last Tuesday. — With Freeman News Service