Army major killed, 2 hurt by amok soldier in Tagum City

KIDAPAWAN CITY, Philippines — A soldier gone berserk killed with his service rifle an officer and wounded two others inside an Army battalion command post in Tagum City late Tuesday.

Radio reports here Wednesday quoted Police Lt. Col. Ruth Dizon, chief of the Tagum City municipal police, as saying that Staff Sergeant Arvin Bureros, an enlisted member of an Army civil-military operation battalion based in Barangay Agustin in Tagum City, escaped after the shooting frenzy.

Dizon said witnesses, among them Army Staff Sergeant Manuel Quevedo, had told probers Bureros approached his two superiors, Major Franklyn Embat and Major  Minehart Maliaoao, and Technical Sergeant Sandato Toma, who were together in a kiosk at one side of their battalion headquarters, and shot them with his 5.56 caliber R4 assault rifle.

Embat, who sustained gunshot wounds in different parts of his body, was declared dead on arrival by physicians at a hospital where companions rushed him for treatment.

The wounded Maliaoao and Toma are both in serious condition, according to Dizon.

Bureros was restive and seemed so agitated the day before the incident, according to his companions.

Companions overheard him shouting “tapusin na natin ito” he gunshots reverberated through their battalion command post in Barangay Agustin.

The Tagum City police and intelligence units of the military’s Eastern Mindanao Command are now cooperating in trying to locate Bureros.