CEBU CITY – A maritime policeman was fatally shot in front of his house in Barangay Babag, Lapu-Lapu City Friday.
Police identified the victim as Police Master Sgt. Joseph Villamor.
Villamor was an intelligence officer of the Philippine National Police Maritime Unit in the Visayas. The victim’s wife is also a police officer assigned to the Police Regional Office in Central Visayas.
The motive of the attack is still being investigated, said Police Master Sgt. Rudy Janagap of the Hoopsdome police station.
Police said Villamor was standing outside his house talking to someone on the phone before 8 p.m. when two men on a motorcycle arrived.
The back rider approached Villamor and suddenly shot him. The assailants fled after the attack.
Villamor was the third policeman in Cebu who was killed in just a week.
Last May 1, Master Sgt. Junard Cinco was gunned down while driving a motorcycle on a highway in Toledo City.
Police said the killing of Cinco may be drug-related since he was involved in the surveillance of a drug pusher, who was shot and killed by police in an alleged shootout last April 30.
A day after Cinco was killed, another policeman died in what was described as a misencounter by the top PRO 7 officer.
Police Corporal Feliciano Yballe Jr., an operative of the Cebu City Mobile Force Company, was shot dead by fellow policemen who had gone to his house in Barangay Sinsin, Cebu City to seek help in tracking down the killers of Cinco.
PRO 7 director Police Brig. Gen. Debold Sinas said Yballe may have taught that the armed men outside his house were out to get him since he had been receiving death threats from drug lords.
The policemen involved in the supposed misencounter were operatives of the Provincial Intelligence Branch of the Cebu Provincial Police Office. (Calvin Cordova)