Gunman shot dead moments after killing target

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Members of the Army’s elite Special Forces (SF) on Tuesday shot dead a notorious hired killer just few meters away from the spot where he felled a man using a .45 caliber pistol.

Suspect Unting Kanda Kalipapa, an ethnic Maguindanao, died on the spot from rifle shots in the head.

Kalipapa has just shot his murder target, Armand Kalim Dayato, and was about to run away when patrolling combatants of the Army’s 5th Special Forces Battalion arrived and engaged him a gunfight.

Dayato was declared dead on arrival at a nearby hospital.

Senior Superintendent Rolen Balquin, director of the Cotabato City police, said the responding SF combatants were forced to neutralize Kalipapa when he refused to yield and opened fire.

Balquin said the shootout triggered panic among people in the surroundings.

Lt. Col. Noli Mapili, commanding officer of the 5th SF Battalion, said Kalipapa hailed from Lebak town in nearby Sultan Kudarat.

The suspect was wanted in Sultan Kudarat for heinous offenses, according to barangay officials in Lebak, a coastal town some 70 kilometers west of Cotabato City.

Balquin and Mapili both said there were indications that the suspect was hired to kill Dayato, a resident of Pagalungan town in Maguindanao.

Dayato and a companion were waiting for someone near a pawnshop at an intersection in a busy spot in west of the city when Kalipapa approached and repeatedly shot him with a .45 caliber pistol.  

The incident was preceded by the brutal killing also on Tuesday by a suspected gun-for-hire of Willen Pesante, an employee of a Manila-based construction firm involved in a multi-million road project that would connect Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Maguindanao and agricultural enclaves in Kakar District in Cotabato City.

Senior Inspector Reynaldo Delantin, chief of the city’s police station 2, said Pesante, of the KCN Construction Company, was waiting for a ride along a busy thoroughfare here when his killer approached and shot him at close range.

Delatin said investigators are still clueless on the identity of Pesante’s killer and the motive for the attack.