CEBU CITY – A Philippine National Police Internal Affairs Service officer was gunned down here Thursday.
Col. Geovanie Maines, chief of the Cebu City Police Office, identified the victim as Lt. Col. Joie Pacito Yape Jr.
Investigation showed that Yape and his wife were walking on Molave St. in Barangay Kamphutaw at around 5:30 p.m. on their way to a mall for a dinner with some friends when a man wearing a hooded jacket approached the victim.
The suspect drew a gun and shot the victim. Yape slumped on the ground and the gunman finished him off with more bullets.
Yape was taken to a hospital where he was declared dead while the gunman fled on a motorcycle driven by an accomplice who wore a full-faced helmet.
The victim was in civilian clothes and was not carrying a firearm during the attack.
Maines said investigators are looking into the possibility that the motive of the attack was job-related.
“I have already instructed the creation of a Special Investigation Task Group to handle the case,” said Maines. “He led several drug raids when he was assigned in Cebu and that’s one of the angles that we are looking into to find out the motive.”
Yape was a former chief of the Provincial Intelligence Branch (PIB) of the Cebu Provincial Police Office. He left the PIB last January and was transferred to Calbayog City. From Calbayog, Yape was moved to Camp Crame, Quezon City, where he was an investigator of the Internal Affairs Service.
The victim arrived in Cebu last Wednesday to attend a three-day seminar on law and procurement planning. Before he was killed, Yape also attended a hearing of a drug case that stemmed from an operation that he led while he was still the PIB chief of CPPO. (Calvin D. Cordova)