Kalinga judge shot dead

BAGUIO CITY — Kalinga police probers still have no solid clues in the gunslaying of a Regional Trial Court (RTC) judge in the capital town of Tabuk Monday night.

Chief Superintendent Rowland Albano, Cordillera police director, has formed a special task force to go after the two killers of RTC Judge Milnar Lammawin.

Lammawin, in his early 50s, was gunned down at about 6:30 p.m. while he and his wife, Venus, president of the Kalinga State College, were buying bread, as they were wont to do after work, from a bakery in Barangay Dagupan.

Reports said Lammawin was returning to his car when he was shot. He died at the Almora General Hospital in Tabuk from gunshot wounds from caliber .45 pistols in the head and neck.

The two gunmen, described to be about 5’4" to 5’6" tall, fled aboard a Ford Fiera van.

Senior Superintendent Eugene Martin, operations chief of the Cordillera police, said the gunmen might have trailed Lammawin before they attacked him.

Police sources claimed that Lammawin’s murder might have something to do with the killing of one Lingbaoan, a former driver of Mayor Camilo Lammawin, the slain judge’s younger brother, several months ago.

Lingbaoan, who belonged to the Maducayan tribe in Sagada, Mt. Province, was gunned down inside the mayor’s vehicle and the younger Lammawin was reportedly linked to the incident, the sources said.

Judge Lammawin belonged to the Magnao-Guilayon tribe in Tabuk town.

He was the second judge to be killed in the Cordillera region since last year. On May 17, 2003, Judge Pinera Biden was gunned down by four men while he was checking his vehicle in front of his house in Conner, Apayao. The suspects were arrested.

Lammawin’s fellow judges in Cagayan Valley (Region 2) condemned his killing yesterday, describing it as "ruthless and barbaric."

Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya RTC Judge Jose Rosales, president of the Philippine Judges Association (PJA) in Region 2, urged authorities to arrest and prosecute Lammawin’s killers.

The regional PJA group also urged the Supreme Court to bestow posthumous recognition to slain judges just what soldiers and policemen who die in the line of duty receive. — With Charlie Lagasca