A gunman killed a ranking government official in an ambush at a stretch of a busy thoroughfare in Barangay Zone 4 in Zamboanga City on Friday morning, January 31.
Col. Kimberly Molitas, acting Zamboanga City police director, was quoted in radio reports on Friday afternoon as saying that Jaybee Robert Villarin Baguinda of the Land Registration Authority in Region 9, succumbed to gunshot wounds in a hospital where emergency responders brought him for treatment.
Baguinda was reported as regional chief of the LRA-9.
He was driving his dark grey Mitsubishi Strada pick-up truck and was about to turn right towards their office from the busy Rizal Street in Barangay Zone 4 in Zamboanga City when a man in white shirt came close, shot him repeatedly with a pistol and immediately fled along with a motorcycle-riding companion waiting nearby.
Molitas and Zamboanga City Mayor John Dalipe had separately condemned the incident.
Dalipe had reportedly directed the barangay officials in Zone 4 in the center of Zamboanga City to help investigators identify the killer of the 57-year-old Baguinda for prosecution. (JFU in Cotabato City, January 31, 2025)
