NBI joins P’sinan slay investigation

MAPANDAN, Pangasinan — The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has joined the investigation into last Wednesday’s gunslaying of this town’s vice mayor and his driver just meters away from the municipal hall.

Superintendent Edgar Basbas, deputy police provincial director for operations who heads Task Force Aquino, told The STAR that the family of slain Vice Mayor Adolfo Aquino has requested the NBI’s inclusion in the probe.

It was also the NBI which conducted the autopsy on Aquino’s body upon the request of his widow, Eden, Basbas said.

According to Basbas, the artists’ sketches of the gunman released by the police as well as by the NBI and the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) based on the descriptions of various eyewitnesses were similar.

The gunman was described as about 25 to 30 years old and with fair complexion and medium build.

Basbas said four teams are pursuing various angles behind the killing of Aquino and his driver, Victor Villanueva.

Aquino’s family suspects that politics had something to do with the killing, although probers are also looking into personal and business-related motives.

Aquino and Mapandan Mayor Jose Ferdinand Calimlim were former running mates in the 2001 elections, but parted ways before the 2004 polls. Calimlim welcomed any investigation.

Basbas believes that the gunman was a hired killer based on his movements, saying that he just casually walked away from the crime scene.

He said Aquino’s brother, Angelito, saw a man fitting the eyewitnesses’ descriptions roaming around the vice mayor’s residence early last Wednesday.

Angelito told probers that the man did not reply when he asked him in the dialect, but did so when he repeated his query in Tagalog. — Eva Visperas