AGNO Pangasinan–The municipal mayor of Agno Pangasinan was shot dead by a lone gunman at 9:20 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 2 in a friend’s house in Poblacion, Agno, some 80 kilometers west of Dagupan City.

The fatality was identified as Mayor Arthur Cabantac who was shot with an automatic rifle while he was playing mahjong with a group of friends in the house of one Mrs. Cecelia Bona, not far from his home. No one else was reported hurt or wounded.

P/Sr Supt. Isagani Nerez, police provincial director, immediately formed a task force to go after the still unidentified killer and possibly the mastermind. The gunman used an M-16 Armalite rifle as evidenced by empty shells found at the crime scene.

Named by Nerez to head Task Force Cabantac is P/Supt. Davey Drapeza with elements of members from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, the PNP Crime Laboratory, the Provincial Intelligence and Investigation Branch and the Agno Police.

The National Bureau of Investigation has been asked to join the task force, too.

Nerez said that the gunman, undetected by Cabantac’s security men, managed to enter the premises and shot the mayor pointblank from the window where he was playing mahjong with three persons.

The mayor was hit on the chest and died on arrival at the Alaminos City Doctors Hospital.

Nerez said the Task Force is now interrogating the mayor’s security men who were with him the premises where the mayor was playing mahjong.

Cabantac is a first-term mayor of Agno having just been elected in May 2007 election, dethroning a political dynasty whose members alternated in ruling the town for many decades.

Nerez said he is not discounting politics as one of the motives for the slaying, adding that investigators are now in touch with Mrs. Cabantac and their daughter who may provide valuable information that could help in the solution of the slaying.

“We are not also discounting the possibility that the mayor may have received death threats prior to the incident, he said.

Cabantac was the second mayor killed in Pangasinan in two years.

The first victim was Mayor Julian Resuello of San Carlos City who was assassinated on April  28, 2007, at that time when he was running for vice mayor in tandem with his son, Julier, who is now mayor of San Carlos. Resuello’s case remains unsolved to this day.

There were also two vice mayors, four councilors as well as a number of barangay captains also similarly killed in the past few years, and all still remained unsolved.–LM

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