Grudge leads to bloody bus hostage drama in Cotabato

PIGCAWAYAN, North Cotabato, Philippines – A personal grudge led to Monday night’s two-hour hostage drama on a bus along the national highway here that left the driver and conductor dead and caused panic in surrounding villages.

The hostage-taker, Melco Lavinia, armed with a handgun and a grenade, eventually agreed to set free all the 41 passengers of the Weena bus he had held hostage and voluntarily turned himself in through the intercession of the municipal and police officials.

Senior Inspector Danilo Cabicas, chief of the local police, said Lavinia, a former barangay tanod, and the slain conductor, initially identified as Bael, figured in a brawl over the suspect’s not having paid his fare from Cotabato City to Pigcawayan more than a week ago.

“The hostage-taker told us that he was humiliated before other passengers by the conductor,” Cabicas said.

Lavinia, clad in denim pants, a light-colored shirt and jacket, boarded the Cotabato City-bound Weena bus at the Pigcawayan public terminal past 6 p.m. Monday.

About a kilometer away from the Pigcawayan town proper, Lavinia casually approached the conductor, pulled out a gun from his waist and opened fire, hitting the victim twice.

Driver Boboy Valdevieso pulled over and tried to prevent Lavinia from alighting from the bus but he, too, was fatally shot twice.

The gunfire caught the attention of villagers who, in turn, grabbed machetes and farm tools and surrounded the bus, forcing Lavinia to hold the passengers hostage.

Lavinia grabbed two passengers, both students of the Notre Dame College of Midsayap, also in North Cotabato, and threatened to blow himself up and the two teenage girls if his demands were not met.

Lavinia merely asked the police to protect him from the angry mob. After two hours, he surrendered and yielded his pistol and his Mark II grenade to the authorities.

“It was a very quiet and peaceful trip until we heard shots at the rear of the vehicle, triggering a commotion,” a female passenger recounted.

More than a dozen passengers sustained contusions and bruises in the commotion that ensued after Lavinia gunned down the bus conductor and driver. – With Edith Regalado