3 hurt in grenade attack on lay minister

MANILA, Philippines — Three people including a nine-year-old girl were wounded after two motorcycle-riding assailants hurled a grenade at a compound owned by a Catholic lay minister in Quezon City on Thursday night. 

The grenade exploded at the compound owned by Leandro Ramillo, 66, along Road 1 in Barangay Bagong Pag-asa at around 8:15 p.m. 

Alitalia Lou Velasco, 32; Roderick Sadia, 46, and the girl sustained minor injuries. 

Ramillo told police he was watching television with his granddaughter when they heard something fall on their roof, followed by an explosion outside.

The grenade, which landed on the roof, fell and exploded on the ground, police said. 

Shrapnel went through the door of a nearby house and hit the girl. Velasco was passing through the area when she was hit. The two were rushed to different hospitals.

Sadia, a Grab driver, also sustained minor injuries when the shrapnel broke through the window of his car while he was passing through. 

Chief Superintendent Guillermo Eleazar, Quezon City Police District (QCPD) director, said witnesses pointed to two men riding a motorcycle as the perpetrators.

Closed-circuit television footage showed two men on a motorcycle speeding away as the grenade exploded.

Eleazar said Ramillo told him he was not aware if he had enemies and he had just come from church that afternoon.

Ramillo is supposedly a mediator in complaints filed with the barangay, police added. 

The QCPD chief said this was not an act of terrorism but may be a scare tactic by “cowardly” assailants.