COTABATO CITY — A couple, a Catholic school official and a student were killed in two ambush incidents in just one hour in the adjoining seaside Lebak and Kalamansig towns in Sultan Kudarat province on Thursday, January 9.
Senior officials from the Sultan Kudarat Provincial Police Office and the Police Regional Office-12 told reporters on Friday, January 10, that the first victims in the two incidents were Nestor Rondon and his wife, Marilou, who were attacked by gunmen while riding a motorcycle together in Purok Tambis, Barangay Santa Clara, Kalamansig.
Rondon and his wife, a barangay health worker in Kalamansig, died from multiple bullet wounds sustained in the attack.
Their two assailants, initially identified only as Oting-Oting and Mohalidin, were arrested before dawn on Friday during a pursuit operation in Barangay Sangay, led by personnel from the Kalamansig Municipal Police Station under Major Rodney Binoya.
Witnesses have positively identified the duo, both residents of Palimbang town in Sultan Kudarat, as the perpetrators of the gun attack that left the Rondons dead.
The atrocity was followed by the fatal ambush of a private school official and his nephew in nearby Lebak town, about 15 kilometers away, at dusk on Thursday.
Henry Racho, a dean and sports instructor at Notre Dame of Salaman College in Barangay Salaman, Lebak, and his nephew, college student Erick James Racho Moyet, were also riding a motorcycle when gunmen armed with pistols, positioned along a road in the town center, opened fire as they got close, killing them both instantly.
Police Brig. Gen. Arnold Ardiente, director of PRO-12, said investigators from the Lebak Municipal Police Station, teachers from the school where Racho worked, and local officials are cooperating to bring closure to the deadly gun attack, the perpetrators of which remain at large.