CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (MindaNews / 2 Aug) – After being given a briefing, Mayor Rolando Uy said he believed the suspect arrested by the police for the killing of his son, Roland Sherwin, was not a “fall guy.”
Uy told reporters Monday that he is confident the nabbed suspect, Edgardo Gaabucayan, is part of the group who killed his son. “I saw the evidence and video that implicated him,” he added.
The Cagayan de Oro City Police Office (COCPO) gave Uy a briefing on how the 59-year-old Gaabucayan was implicated in the November 11, 2021 killing of Roland Sherwin.
Roland Sherwin, 45, a council member of Barangay Carmen, was shot and killed by gunmen in the family-owned quarry in Barangay Pagatpat. The gunmen also killed his employee, Samuel Pabalan, who was with the victim.
Police brought Gaabucayan to Cagayan de Oro after they arrested him in his house in Purok 6, Barangay Cabasagan, Lala town in Lanao del Norte last Saturday.
Gaabucayan did not talk to reporters and only claimed to the police that he was an alleged former member of the dreaded liquidation squad of the New People’s Army (NPA), the Sparrow Unit.
Uy told reporters he did not meet and talked with Gaabucayan, who is now at the Maharlika police detention cell.
“I do not feel any hatred against him. I leave the investigation to the police. I trust them to bring the killers of my son to justice,” Uy said.
He said his family would give out the ₱4-million bounty they offered as soon as he is satisfied that justice was achieved.
“I know the case would be solved soon because the police has not stopped their investigation,” Uy said.
Major Gerson Santanilla, commander of the Bulua police station, said they are still looking for the second gunman who shot and killed Roland Sherwin.
Santanilla said Gaabucayan was the one who shot 75-year-old Pabalan, the caretaker of the Uy family quarry site in Zone 1, Barangay Pagatpat, this city.
He admitted that they are having a hard time finding the second gunman “because there are no witness who saw him.”
Santanilla said a witness, a dump truck driver, was able to identify Gaabucayan as he saw him gun down Pabalan.
The police officer said the witness was confident of the identity of Gaabucayan, who even helped him find a parking space for the dump truck he was driving.
In an interview three days after the killing, Major Evan Viñas, COCPO spokesperson, said investigators came to a conclusion that there were two gunmen when they found two different shells and bullets from the crime scene last November 11.
Viñas said crime scene investigators found five of the six bullets in Uy’s body were fired from the same gun while the sixth bullet was from another pistol, the weapon used on Pabalan.
Col. Aaron Mandia, city police director, said they also established the motive as personal grudge and is still investigating the reported involvement of a contractor.
“The killing of Sherwin was a personal grudge, not politically motivated,” Mandia said, dismissing speculations that it had something to do with the elections last May.
Uy said that sometime in 2018, his late son confided to him that he had a quarrel with a contractor whose operations he had stopped for allegedly damaging the barangay roads in Pagatpat. (Froilan Gallardo / MindaNews)
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