BY RUBY P. SILUBRICO
ILOILO – Police provincial director, Senior Supt. Cornelio Salinas assured the public that the investigation on the shooting that left one man dead in Dueñas town on Good Friday will be fair and transparent.
Subject of the investigation are the policemen who reportedly fired at Roy Lamason of Brgy. Purog, Dueñas.
Salinas added that the gun used to shot Lamason was already identified – a caliber .9mm pistol.
The firearms of the four responding police officers in the incident will undergo ballistics examination, he added, to determine who owned the gun that hit Lamason.
The 22-year-old Lamason succumbed to a gunshot wound on the head while being treated at the Don Valeriano District Hospital in Passi City.
Dueñas policemen claimed he and three other theft suspects they were chasing fired at them, so they fired back.
If the policemen were to be believed, Lamason and the three others they failed to identify stole electrical wires.
But Lamason’s mother denied her son was a thief.
“He had no criminal record in our barangay. He was a good son,” insisted Loreto Lamason.
She also claimed her son was actually sleeping in a nipa hut near the alleged shootout site at the time of the so-called exchanges of fire between the policemen and the theft suspects.
Salinas said the investigation he ordered should not affect the morale of policemen throughout the province.
“They should take this as a challenge…part of operational hazards. As police officers, we have to be accountable for our actions,” he stressed.
Results of the autopsy conducted on Lamason appeared to give credence to the mother’s contention.
According to Dr. Owen Lebaquin, medico-legal officer of the Police Regional Office 6, Roy was likely lying on his back when hit by a bullet.
The mother said she will file charges against the policemen who shot her son./PN
