Mindoro cop charged for slay of radio commentator

MANILA, Philippines - A policeman was slapped with murder charges for the killing of radio commentator and former Mindoro Occidental governor Crispin Perez Jr. A National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) task force headed by Arnel Dalumpines filed the complaint against Police Officer 2 Darwin R. Quimoyog before the Department of Justice. Quimoyog, assigned at the Magsaysay police station in Mindoro Occidental, was positively identified by the victim’s wife, Irene Sungao-Perez, as the one who shot her husband twice last June 9 in San Jose town. The suspect was placed under the custody of Police Regional Office 4-B-Mimaropa at Camp Eugenio Navarro in Calapan City, Oriental Mindoro. According to the NBI, the former governor had just went home from his daily morning program Sa Totoo Lang over local dwDO station, when he was shot to death by a lone gunman using a .45-caliber revolver. Mrs. Reyes told investigators that she was taking her routine morning cardio-thread mill exercise at the sala of their house when she saw her husband talking to an unidentified man. She thought that the man was just a client seeking legal advice from her husband. But after about 30 minutes, when her husband was standing up after the meeting, the man suddenly shot the former governor. Authorities were able to trace Quimoyog’s whereabouts through the motorcycle that he allegedly used to escape from the crime scene. Perez’s killing was condemned on Thursday by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), which called for an immediate investigation into the incident. Unesco director general Koïchiro Matsuura said he was “deeply concerned" that so many Filipino journalists had paid with their lives for “exercising the fundamental human right of freedom of expression." Matsuura stressed that “it was essential for democracy that citizens had the right to be informed in an independent way on what was going on in their country." The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Perez was the fourth journalist in the Philippines killed this year. Only last month, Unesco denounced the murder of a newspaper reporter near Manila and the incident involving two other journalists who were hurt in separate incidents but survived the attacks. The Philippines is considered as one of the deadliest nations for journalists. The CPJ says the country’s impunity rate of over 90 percent is related to the killings of Filipino media practitioners. - GMANews.TV