PAOAY, Ilocos Norte – Police probing the Christmas Day ambush-slay of the mayor of Paracelis, Mt. Province are now setting their eyes on the suspected gunmen.
Refusing to divulge yet who the suspects are and their motive, Senior Superintendent Joseph Adnol, Mt. Province police director, said they now have positive leads in the killing of Paracelis Mayor Caesar Rafael.
Adnol refused to give more details so as not to bungle their investigation.
Gov. Maximo Dalog, who visited Rafael’s wake, called on the police to bring justice to the mayor’s family.
Chief Superintendent Eugene Martin, Cordillera police director, expressed a sigh of relief that investigators are now closing in on the suspects.
“We could not tell media yet,” he said.
Earlier, Adnol said that solving the case was like finding a needle in the haystack because Rafael was gunned down with M-16 rifles by at least five men in a secluded road away from his farm in Barangay Butigue, Paracelis town.
Police found at least 60 M-16 shells in the crime scene.
On Dec. 26, Adnol claimed that probers were able to locate witnesses although they were quite far from the ambush site.
The New People’s Army has not claimed responsibility for the killing although talk is rife that it was involved.
In the 1980s, the NPA held Rafael, who his detractors had branded as a “warlord,” for days.
Rafael’s daughter, Natonin Mayor Ana Marie Rafael-Banaag, told reporters that his father had kept mum on his security problems.