MANILA, Philippines - The driver of the getaway vehicle used in the assassination of a Capiz vice mayor May last year has implicated a local contractor and a soldier in the killing, police said on Wednesday.
The Capiz provincial police office said Roger Loredo has positively identified contractor Leodegario Labao Jr. and a certain Army Staff Sgt. Rommel Pamotillo as the masterminds of the killing of Vice mayor Abel Martinez of Mambusao town.
The police have requested the Department of Justice to reopen the preliminary investigation on the case and include Labao, who is running for mayor of Mambusao in the upcoming elections, in the list of respondents.
Martinez was gunned down in front of his house in Poblacion Proper, Mambusao, Capiz on May 4, 2012.
The slain mayor won three terms as Mambusao vice mayor and was planning to run for mayor in the May 2013 elections. He would have been running against Labao.
Police said Loredo admitted that drove the getaway motorcycle used by the gunmen in their escape.
He said that from the crime scene, they went directly to a compound owned by Labao where he saw the contractor and Pamotillo.
He claimed that Labao later gave an envelope containing money to one of the hired guns, whom he identified as Gilbie Prinsipe.
After a few days, Loredo said Prinsipe gave him P40,000 as payment for his role in the assassination.
He claimed that the actual contract price for the killing was P150,000. He said that the plan to kill the vice mayor was hatched sometime in March 2012 inside a cockpit in Barangay Bating, also in Mambusao town.
Investigators described Labao as a contractor favored by some politicians.
He has been involved in some controversies, including the demolition of the Mambusao town plaza which his construction company subsequently rebuilt, investigators said.
Martinez scored the demolition of the plaza, saying Labao's move was illegal because there was no ordinance authorizing such action.
Martinez said there was also no public bidding in the award of the rebuilding contract to Labao.
Police said they sought the reopening of the investigation after they traced Loredo in a hospital.
Loredo was wounded in an accidental grenade blast that also killed Prinsipe, the alleged gunman in the Martinez murder, while policemen were pursuing the two suspects.
Loredo is now detained at the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology facility in Pototan, Iloilo where he executed his sworn statement, implicating Labao and Pamotillo, reportedly of the Army Intelligence Group in Fort Bonifacio, and several others in the Martinez murder.