CEBU CITY – A Special Investigation Task Group is reviewing the cases that slain police officer Lt. Col. Joei Yape handled in the conduct of his duties as these may lead to the unmasking of his killers.
Yape was gunned down while he and his wife were walking on a road here last Thursday.
“It is likely that the motive was job-related. As a former chief of the Intelligence Branch, he spearheaded cases that led to some people getting arrested, jailed, or investigated. As police officers, we have so many responsibilities and along the way, we earned enemies,” Police Brig. Gen. Val de Leon, chief of the Police Regional Office-Central Visayas, said.
The SITG Yape, headed by Police Col. Geovanie Maines, officer-in-charge of the Cebu City Police Office, is reviewing some footages of security cameras installed near the crime scene.
De Leon said he is not yet giving the SITG an ultimatum to solve the case. “I will be meeting with the SITG and depending on the gathered pieces of evidence, I may give them a timeline to solve the case.”
He said the SITG is trying to avoid rushing the investigation. “If the time comes that we are going to file a case, it should be based on evidence and not on speculations,” De Leon pointed out.
Maines said the SITG is now pursuing a certain angle but refused to reveal what it was pending further investigation.
He revealed that they found out that aside from fellow policemen, Yape got into a conflict with a politician in Cebu when he headed the Provincial Intelligence Branch of the CPPO.
One of the prominent cases that Yape handled as chief of PIB was the case of former Medellin, Cebu Mayor Ricky Ramirez, who was arrested after cache of firearms and drug-sniffing paraphernalia were seized in his house during a raid last July 2017. Ramirez was killed by a group of armed men in his hospital room in Medellin last June. (Calvin D. Cordova)
