Slain police officer’s father was also a cop killed by law offenders

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The police officer killed in a shootout with two illegal gun dealers in Pagadian City early Sunday, August 23, was a hardworking law-enforcer and staunch supporter of activities promoting religious solidarity among Muslims and non-Muslims.

His colleagues in the Bangsamoro region told reporters on Monday that the slain 35-year-old Major Aiman Khuzaimah Pantaran, intelligence officer in the Pagadian City Police Station, under the Police Regional Office 9, was a scion of a big Iranun clan in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte, but grew up in the adjoining Kapatagan and Sultan Naga Dimaporo towns in Lanao del Sur and in Lanao del Norte, respectively.

Officials of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and their counterparts in PRO 9, which is based in Zamboanga City, had separately told reporters that Pantaran was a consistent honor student while in elementary and high school and ranked 9th among the top ten graduates of the Philippine National Police Academy in 2013.

Pantaran died from a bullet wound in the chest sustained in a brief gunfight with two known illegal gun dealers, the siblings Janie Bravo Gomez and Jerry Bravo Gomez, during an entrapment operation before dawn Sunday at Purok Malipayon in Barangay Dao in Pagadian City that turned haywire.

The encounter also left the Gomez brothers dead. They are known in Pagadian City and nearby towns in Lanao del Sur as longtime illegal dealers of firearms. 

Local executives in Lanao del Sur, one of the five provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said besides their gunrunning activities, the Gomez brothers also peddled shabu and marijuana supplied to them by remnants of the now defunct Dawlah Islamiya holding out in hinterlands in their municipalities.

Officials of PRO-9 and local executives in Pagadian City had told reporters that Sunday's entrapment operation, planned by Pantaran and his subordinates, went awry when the Gomez brothers pulled out guns when they discovered they were dealing then with non-uniformed policemen and opened fire, provoking a gunfight.

Relatives of Pantaran belonging to noble Iranun clans in Maguindanao del Norte’s neighboring Sultan Kudarat and Sultan Mastura towns, among them incumbent elected municipal and barangay officials, told reporters his having become a policeman had a painful beginning.

Local executives, among them related by blood to Maguindanao Del Norte Gov. Tucao Mastura, said Pantaran aspired to become a policeman when he was 16 years old, after law offenders shot dead his father, Police Captain Pelaez Pantaran, chief of the Sultan Naga Dimaporo Police Station then, in an incident in the municipality that he had witnessed personally.

“After their father’s demise he struggled to help sustain their family. There were moments they did not have food to eat. He persisted and graduated with high honors in high school and became a cadet in the Philippine National Police Academy and graduated from there in 2013,” an uncle, also in the police service, told reporters on Monday.

Maguindanao del Norte Vice Gov. Marshall Sinsuat said he will consult members of their Sangguniang Panlalawigan, which he leads as presiding chairperson, about the viability of drafting a board resolution honoring Pantaran for his “supreme sacrifice” as a police officer.

“The late Major Pantaran, being from an Iranun clan in our province, deserves it. We must not forget that our 16th-century hero, the legendary Sultan Kudarat, who fought the Spaniards, was an Iranun,”  said Sinsuat, a senior member of the multi-sector Maguindanao del Norte Provincial Peace and Order Council.