
PHOTO: Muntinlupa City Police Station. Via the Muntinlupa City Government.
The citizens and the local government of Muntinlupa City faced a harrowing start to their week last 26 September 2017, as a total of five persons that day were attacked by unidentified gunmen within city limits. Three were killed in these separate encounters.
The first incident happened at 12:50am: A black pickup truck had been tailing businessman Samuel Aguilar (the 47-year-old president of the Iloilo-based Eagle Crest aming and Holdings Corp.) and his driver, at the corner of Commerce and Filinvest avenues in Alabang, when four men alighted from the vehicle and fired at Aguilar’s vehicle. City police chief Senior Supt. Dante Novicio reported that no one was hurt in this encounter. The police report also noted that two of the gunmen were seen wearing Philippine National Police t-shirts. A total of 28 M-16 bullet casings were recovered by officials from the scene.
Some ten hours later at 10:15am, 59-year-old entrepreneur Elvira Abanilla was driving her car along National Road, Barangay Putatan, when she was shot in the neck by two men riding in tandem on a motorbike. Abanilla is currently confined at a hospital.
At 10:00 in the evening, 29-year-old resident of Rosario, Cavite Ronald Natividad was murdered near the corner of Acacia and Ilaya Streets in Alabang. Witnesses to the crime reported that six assailants riding motorcycles were involved.
Less than half an hour later, in front of a convenience store in Barangay Bayanan, 21-year-old Von Albert Arevalo was gunned down by a six-member group on motorbikes.
Police reports say that after killing Arevalo, the assailants spotted 52-year-old Orlando Dolleton drinking coffee at a nearby vulcanizing shop and shot him, too.
Arevalo and Dolleton were pronounced dead at the Alabang Medical Clinic.