BACOLOD City – An incumbent councilor was killed in a shooting incident in Escalante City, Negros Occidental.
The 72-year-old Benardino Patigas was on board a motorcycle when an unidentified assailant shot him around 4:30 p.m. on April 22.
Patigas sustained gunshot wounds on the head and other parts of the body, a police report showed.
Police Colonel Romeo Baleros, director of Negros Occidental Police Provincial Office, said on Tuesday investigators are looking into three angles – personal grudge, election related and illegal gambling.
Patigas was a former secretary-general of the Northern Negros Alliance of Human Rights Advocates.
He was among those included in a poster bearing faces of suspected communist rebels circulated in Moises Padilla town.
According to Karapatan Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights, Patigas, whom they referred to as “Tay Toto”, was a survivor of the Escalante massacre on Sept. 20, 1985 and continued to support human rights advocacies and joined fact-finding missions in Negros.(With a report from PNA/PN)
