UMINGAN —After 10 long years, the slaying of San Carlos City Mayor Julian Resuello in April 2007 has a good chance of being solved finally with the arrest of a woman tagged as leader of gun-for-hire group and her co-accused in Umingan town on Oct. 9 and 10.

First was Loida Gonzales Mendoza, the woman leader of the Gonzales Group and the leader/financier of the Pogito Group, and two members of gun-for-hire groups operating in Pangasinan and the adjacent provinces.

Mendoza, whose husband is a foreigner, was arrested at her residence on Rizal Street in Poblacion East, Umingan when operatives of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) and the Umingan police served an alias warrant for her arrest for double murder.

Arrested the next day in Luna Weste, Umingan was John Tumabcao, who is Mendoza’s co-accused in the double murder case, identified as a member of the Gonzales group of guns-for hire, also a newly identified member of the Ignacio crime group, also operating in Pangasinan.

The two are expected to identify the master-mind.

The Gonzales group was also listed as a newly identified criminal group in Lupao, a town in Nueva Ecija next to Umingan.

Both suspects, were implicated in the slaying of Mayor Resuello at the city plaza during the coronation night of the San Carlos City fiesta. Also killed in that incident was Resuello’s close-in security.

Chief Inspector Jose Abaya II, chief of police of Umingan, said Mendoza was arrested shortly after her arrival from abroad where she fled.

The woman escaped prosecution after the grisly murder of Resuello and his bodyguard by going abroad. She was nevertheless among those charged in the case filed before a team of prosecutors in Candon, Ilocos Sur.

Abaya said two other persons named respondents in the double murder case are at-large and now being hunted by CIDG in various parts of Pangasinan and the country.

Lawmen are optimistic that with Mendoza and Tumabcao now under custody, their cohorts in the gun-for-hire syndicates now on the run will also be arrested soon.

Meanwhile, the police called on all relatives of victims of the gun-for-hire groups to come out in the open and show evidence to prove the guilt of the two suspects in custody.

The police are looking into the possibility that Mendoza’s group was also   behind the sensational killings in Pangasinan including the slaying of Mayors Guerrero Zaragoza of Tayug, Conrado Rodrigo of San Nicolas and Regional Trial Court Judge Oscar Uson.

The late Mayor Julian Resuello was the father of incumbent San Carlos City Mayor Joseres Resuello and Vice Mayor Julier Resuello, who also served for three terms as mayor of San Carlos City. (Leonardo Micua) 

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