Politics, business rivalry eyed in Cagayan mayor’s killing

TUGUEGARAO CITY — Police authorities are eyeing politics or business rivalry as a motive behind the assassination of the mayor of the northern Cagayan town of Allacapan last Saturday night.

But Senior Superintendent James Melad, provincial police director, admitted that investigators were still clueless as to the identities of the two motorcycle-riding men who gunned down Mayor Nathaniel Oña, 52, at about 7 p.m. last Saturday.

Besides politics and business rivalry, probers, however, were not discounting personal grudge behind the murder of Oña, whose family owns several businesses here, including a gas refilling station in Allacapan town.

Police claimed that they have a list of possible masterminds, but declined to name them pending the arrest of the two gunmen whom they believe to be hired killers.

Chief Superintendent Jefferson Soriano, Cagayan Valley police director, has formed Task Force Oña, which includes the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group and the National Bureau of Investigation, to go after the mayor’s assassins.

"Our operatives are intensely pursuing them. There is no way they can escape us. Their capture is imminent. Their arrest would no doubt lead to the identification and eventual arrest of the brains," he said.

Oña was shot in the left chin with a caliber .45 pistol while he, together with two of his workers, was at the family-owned gasoline station in the town proper of Allacapan, about two hours by land from this capital city.

Oña was pronounced dead on arrival at the Christian Hospital in neighboring Aparri town.

Witnesses said the maong-clad triggerman, described as five feet, 10 inches tall, casually went back to his waiting companion after the shooting and they fled southward.

Oña, who hailed from Pangasinan, defeated businesswoman Mila Florida for his second term as Allacapan mayor in the 2004 elections.

Oña earlier had served as mayor for three consecutive terms and was replaced by his wife in 1995.