Samar parish priest slain

TACLOBAN CITY, Philippines – At least five gunmen killed the parish priest of Catubig, Northern Samar in an ambush in San Jose town yesterday morning.

Chief Superintendent Mario Sandiego, Eastern Visayas police director, said Fr. Cecilio Lucero, younger brother of former Northern Samar second district congressman Wilmar Lucero, was declared dead on arrival at the provincial hospital.

Lucero, 48, sustained five bullet wounds from an Armalite rifle and a caliber .45 automatic in different parts of the body.

Sandiego said he has deployed a platoon from the Regional Mobile Group to augment the police forces pursuing the priest’s killers.

“We are now in the process of gathering and exploring information for us to establish the real motive in this killing, yet initially the investigation is focusing on the possible angles on politics (and his being an) advocate of human rights,” he said.

Senior Superintendent Eusebio Mejos, Northern Samar police director, said Lucero was boarding his Toyota van along with police escort PO2 Eugene Bation and a civilian, Isidro Miras, when he was attacked.

Mejos said the priest’s ambushers immediately withdrew as Bation shot it out with them. Miras sustained injuries, he said.

Mejos said Bation was detailed to Lucero after the priest, citing death threats, sought protection from Chief Inspector Joel Nitsa, commander of the Regional Mobile Group.

Lucero, chairman of the Diocesan Committee on Human Rights and Justice under Bishop Charlie Trance of the Northern Samar Diocese, had just arrived from the island town of Capul when he was gunned down. 

In a phone interview, former congressman Lucero refused to comment on his brother’s killing, saying their family would release an official statement in due time. “I’m sorry we cannot give any statement at this time… but our concern now is for the government investigating agencies to help us solve this crime… nothing but justice is what we want to give my brother,” he said. 

Eastern Samar Gov. Ben Evardone, who chairs the Region 8 Peace and Order Council, condemned the killing and asked the regional police to conduct a thorough investigation.

“That is certainly a shocking case of extra-judicial killing,” said Caloocan Bishop Deogracias Iniguez, chairman of the Episcopal Commission on Public Affairs of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.

Fr. Lucero was hounded by controversies while serving as parish priest in Capul town for allegedly carrying firearms during Sunday Mass. He, however, dismissed this in some media interviews. – With Ro­berto Dejon, Cecille Suerte Felipe and Helen Flores