BACOLOD CITY – Police are investigating the murder of a suspected member of the “Odicta drug group” last Thursday.
According to police report, Nathan Zerrudo, 44, of Tanza, Iloilo City, was found dead with 22 stab and gunshot wounds in the head and body in Barangay Cabug early Thursday morning.
Police recovered from the scene eight spent shells from .45-caliber pistol and four from .9mm pistol, five slugs from .22-caliber gun, and two slugs from .45- caliber firearm.
Lt. Jonito Pastrana, head of Police Station 9, said the victim was summarily executed or “salvaged” based on his injuries.
“He was probably killed somewhere and was left there,” he added.
He also said the recovered slugs have no deformation and they were mixed with the bullets, indicating that the perpetrators probably just threw them there to make it appear that the killing happened there.
“Even the blood on his chest from stab wounds was already wiped off,” he added.
Pastrana said they were eyeing more than three persons as responsible behind the killing.
He said they were looking into drug-related motive behind the killing since he was linked to the late Western Visayas drug lord Melvin Odicta, who was killed along with his wife at Caticlan port in Malay, Aklan in August 2016.
Pastrana said they didn’t know how long Zerrudo had been staying here, adding that he was identified as a high value target in Pavia, Iloilo province.
The recent killing came a month after a suspected member of a drug group in Negros Occidental was also brutally killed in the said village. (Glazyl Masculino)