Bacong Mayor Jocelyn Alviola has ruled out a personal feud angle behind Tuesday’s grenade-throwing incident in his residence.
Alviola told investigators that the possibility of a personal feud is “totally out of the picture”.
Still unknown suspects lobbed a fragmentation grenade at the garage of the Alviola home at 8:45 p.m. Tuesday, which exploded at the parked SUV of the couple.
The explosion damaged the right side of the vehicle and blew out the rear tires.
Mayor Alviola and her husband, Bacong Vice Mayor Lenin Alviola, were at home at the time of the incident.
The mayor said she was about to play crossword puzzle with her cellphone when she heard a loud explosion, thinking at first it was at the back portion of their rooftop. Minutes later, she was informed by her daughter-in-law about the explosion.
The mayor’s pregnant daughter-in-law Diane Jane Justiniani Alviola, 30, who was sitting at the porch about five meters from the explosion site, was also hit by shrapnel resulting in burns in her right neck, arm, leg, and foot.
Mayor Alviola said she could not think of anybody who may have the reason to do it to the family after having been in politics for many decades, and she has not had any threats.
But she said she does not discount the political angle because many have ambitions to become mayor of the municipality. Candidates will be filing their certificates of candidacy for next year’s elections in October.
The Bacong police, headed by Police Senior Inspector Luis Lakandula, is studying the footage from the closed-circuit television that could help in the investigation, while the National Bureau of Investigation is conducting its own parallel investigation.
A witness said that prior to the incident, she saw a man in the vicinity whom she could not identify and who was probably not from Bacong.
Another eye witness noticed a motorcycle where the driver and the backrider were using t-shirts as bonnets.
It slowed down in front of the mayor’s residence and lobbed the grenade before fleeing going to east direction, then to the north going to Dumaguete. (Juancho Gallarde/PNA)
