ILOILO – The barangay captain of Aldeguer in the municipality of Sara allegedly fired a gun at policemen during a buy-bust operation so he was shot to death. According to Senior Superintendent Marlon Tayaba, police provincial director, they are currently prioritizing high-value targets in the antidrug campaign because “they are the ones disposing illegal drugs.”
Barangay Captain Rex Lagura died of multiple gunshot wounds on the head, shoulders, chest and back late Wednesday night.
Police Regional Office 6 (PRO-6) data showed Lagura to be the 65th drug war casualty in Western Visayas since July 2016 when the campaign started.
Twenty-two sachets of shabu worth P30,000 were recovered from Lagura, including the two sachets that an undercover police officer bought from the suspect, according to Senior Inspector Ascencion Ortizo, Sara police chief and also the deputy of the Iloilo Police Provincial Office’s Provincial Drug Enforcement Unit (PDEU).
PDEU carried out the sting operation around 11 p.m.
Tayaba said they are now focused on high-value targets because “they are the ones disposing illegal drugs.”
Previous antidrug operations had been peaceful, he stressed, “But if the suspect resists, we have no other recourse but to defend ourselves.”
Lagura was listed as level 2 high-value target drug suspect by the PDEU.
The poseur buyer was handed two sachets of shabu worth P2,900 in front of Lagura’s house but the suspect dashed inside the house after realizing he was being entrapped, got a gun and fired at the cop, said Ortizo.
Aside from shabu, a .357 revolver was recovered from Lagura, according to the police chief.
PDEU operatives arrested Lagura’s wife Anita, 50. Ortizo said she would be charged with conspiring with her husband in peddling shabu.
However, Anita – a utility worker at the office of Sara mayor Ermilita Salcedo – denied her or her husband’s involvement in illegal drugs.
There was no buy-bust, she said in a radio interview, and insinuated that the shabu and gun recovered by the police were planted evidence.
If Anita were to be believed, policemen barged into their house and forced her husband out of their bedroom.
She was ordered to stay in the room from where she heard bursts of gunfire and policemen shouting “Nagbato! Nagbato! (He fought back!),” according to Anita.
When she was finally allowed to emerge from the room, said Anita, she saw her husband on the floor of their sala, bleeding from gunshot wounds.
Lagura was declared dead at the Sara District Hospital.
The suspect was an ex-convict; he was imprisoned years ago at the Iloilo District Jail in Barangay Nanga, Pototan town for illegal possession of firearms, according to Tayaba.
The death of Lagura came hours after Jonathan Baron, a village councilor of Barangay Jelicuon Montinola, Cabatuan, Iloilo and tagged as a level 2 high-value drug target, was killed in a drug buy-bust operation. (With a report from the Philippine News Agency/PN)
