Shooting spree: Province police chief sacked

Dubai: The Philippine National Police (PNP) has reportedly ordered the sacking of the police chief of a province in southern Philippines following two grisly killings in a span of three days.

Inspector Bryan Gregorio of the PNP Public Information Office told XPRESS they got wind of reports that Senior Superintendent Felipe Roxas Jr, Director of the Laguna Provincial Police Office was relieved of his command.

“We heard that he was already relieved,'' said Gregorio.

Superintendent Roxas had expected his relief.

“I leave my fate to my superiors. I did all I could under the circumstances. Despite that another massacre occurred. It's out of my control,'' Roxas told reporters.

Eight people, including three children -- ages 4, 7 and 8 -- were killed and six were injured when a man ran amuck and went on a shooting spree in a farming village in the city of Calamba shortly before midnight on Sunday.

The killings happened barely three days after still unidentified armed robbers broke into a bank in the nearby town of Cabuyao and shot nine bank employees and a customer in the head “gangland style.''

Laguna, a province bordering Metro Manila in the south, is home to several multinational factories and electronic and car assembly plants.

Police has set up road blocks and check points and intensified security patrols throughout the province in a bid to nail down the bank robbers.

The bank and private contributors raised 2 million pesos (Dh171,000) as a reward for the capture of the killers.

A team of detectives was sent out to hunt down Allan Defiesta, the suspected assailant in the village shooting, who fled the crime scene.

It was nearly midnight when Allan Defiesta allegedly went on a rampage in the village of Homolan and fired his M-16 rifle at three separate houses where the 14 victims were sleeping after watching a village council-sponsored basketball game on Sunday night.

An account by the Philippine Daily Inquirer said the victims' houses where about a hundred metres apart.

Witnesses said one hut was almost destroyed when the gunman emptied an entire magazine of bullets in strafing the house. The assailant also fired at animals and a cemented gutter as terrified residents hid in their houses.

A resident told the Inquirer that they did not know the gunman, who was from another village.

An Associated Press report quoting Chief Superintendent Ricardo Padilla, Director of the Police Regional Office 4 which has jurisdiction over the Southern Tagalog region, said a witness heard the gunman as saying he was upset that people in the town were making fun of him.

Relatives of the victims however, insist they were peaceful residents and most of the male victims were merely farmhands who earn 230 pesos (Dh20) a day cutting grass and tilling ricefields.