Farmer, 64, shot dead at home in E.B. Magalona

By Glazyl M. Jopson

BACOLOD CITY — Five unidentified armed men shot and killed a 64-year-old farmer at his home in Barangay San Isidro, E.B. Magalona, Negros Occidental, on Monday.

In a radio interview, Police Capt. Jyan Carlo Mania, chief of the E.B. Magalona Municipal Police Station, said the armed men dragged the victim outside the house while leaving his wife behind.

Three gunshots were then heard, Mania said.

When the victim’s wife checked on her husband, she found him with gunshot wounds to the chest, the back of the neck, and the right leg.

Police recovered a spent cartridge case believed to have been fired from an M16 rifle.

Mania said investigators could not yet link the killing to the July 10 attacks in neighboring Victorias City, where the New People’s Army’s Roselyn Jean Pelle Command claimed responsibility for killing a farm caretaker and a poultry farm worker whom the rebel group accused of being military assets.

The NPA is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines and has waged a decades-long insurgency against the government.

Mania said information gathered by investigators indicated that the victim had previously been reprimanded over his livestock, particularly a cow that had allegedly damaged plants in the upland village.

The shooting occurred at 9 a.m. but was reported to police two hours later, Mania said.

The victim’s house is on a hill about 45 kilometers from the town proper and about 1 kilometer from another house.

Investigators sought assistance from the Negros Occidental Provincial Mobile Force Company for additional security when they responded to the crime scene.

Mania said police were investigating the motive for the killing.