Tricycle driver, nurse-passenger killed in General Santos ambush

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — A tricycle driver, out on bail for criminal cases, and his passenger, a nurse, were killed in an ambush in General Santos City on Monday afternoon, February 2.

Local officials and investigators from the General Santos City Police Office are certain that the target of the attack was the 32-year-old tricycle driver Iven Conde, then just out on bail for criminal cases pending in courts, including rape, acts of lasciviousness, homicide and drug trafficking.

The 24-year-old Nhiezer Rolliene Jane Aguacito, a nurse, was in Conde’s tricycle, on her way home from a grocery store, when they were attacked by gunmen at the busy Aparente-Salvani intersection in Barangay City Heights in General Santos City.

Colonel Nicomedes Olaivar Jr., General Santos City police director, told reporters on Tuesday that Conde, a resident of Barangay Mabuhay in the city, died instantly from bullet wounds sustained in the attack while Aguacito was declared dead on arrival at a hospital where emergency responders brought her for treatment.

Their assailants immediately escaped using a getaway motorcycle. 

Aguacito, who works in a hospital in General Santos City and resides in Oringo in Barangay City Heights, is from a big Ilonggo clan in Esperanza town in Sultan Kudarat province.

Olaivar said their investigators and intelligence agents from the Police Regional Office 12 and local executives are cooperating in putting a closure to the incident.