ICPO forms focus team to solve teenager slay

By Jennifer P. Rendon

 

The Iloilo City Police Office (ICPO) has formed a “focus team” to solve the murder of a 17-year-old boy from Molo, Iloilo City.

Police Lieutenant Colonel Alexis Relado, ICPO officer-in-charge, said they have decided to create a dedicated team following the attention given by Police General Rene Pamuspusan, Western Visayas police chief, and Mayor Jerry Treñas to the case.

Relado said Molo police investigators would be reinforced by personnel from the ICPO headquarters to look into circumstances that led to the death of John Paolo Yson.

He noted that most of their personnel were deployed to quarantine facilities and border control checkpoints.

He said they might pull out investigators deployed for COVID-19-related duties to help solve Yson’s killing.

Yson, a Grade 11 student, was playing inside their neighborhood computer café when a gunman shot him.

The two suspects arrived on board a motorcycle, a few steps from the shop’s entrance around 3:20 pm of Aug 20.

The back rider got off the motorcycle and went inside the shop and immediately pumped bullets on the victim.

The victim succumbed to three gunshot injuries.

There were six other customers inside the computer rental shop but none of them identified the gunman who was wearing a mask and crash helmet.

The six customers and the shop’s owner scampered to different directions.

Thirty seconds later, the gunman was seen boarding the motorcycle. They then sped off.

 

PREDICAMENT

While the incident happened in broad daylight at a thickly populated area, the two suspects remain unidentified.

“Our predicament is how to identify the suspects given that they were wearing a face mask and helmet. There were eyewitnesses but they couldn’t describe them,” Relado said.

As such, “one way of knowing the assailants is identifying the getaway vehicle they used,” he said.

Relado said he already ordered investigators to secure CCTV footages – both from establishments and residences – where the suspects may have passed by.

Right now, it appeared that mistaken identity is still one of the strongest motives in the killing.

Investigators had considered the possibility that the victim was not the target after checking on his record in the community. He was not also on the drugs watchlist nor was he involved in any misdemeanor.

There were reports that the real target of the assassination sat beside the victim inside the computer café.

Yson also wore a shirt with a similar color with that of the actual target of the suspects.

It was gathered that Yson was the eldest of the four children. His parents were separated for several years already.

Days before the incident, Yson intimated to his mother that he wanted to temporarily stay with her in Antique province.