Five security guards of a property covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program in Siaton, Negros Oriental have been charged with four counts of multiple murder and one count of frustrated murder before the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office.
Insp. Rafael Lorenz Serion, Siaton police chief, disclosed Monday that the charges were filed on Friday before the office of Fiscal Joanne Marie Muñoz-Abada.
The suspects also filed for a right to a preliminary hearing and signed a waiver of detention that they will be under police custody pending the proceedings of the preliminary hearing, said Insp. Serion.
The respondents are Roswil Cero Antanoy, Edilberto Torres Pancho, Reynante Baylon Rubia, Nelcher Abril Abordo, and Jason Torres Ramos, all security guards of the Nico Security Agency in Cangmating, Sibulan in Negros Oriental. They were hired to be assigned at the CARP-covered property of Don Gaspar Vicente in Napacao.
Of the five, only one appears to have a legitimate license as a security guard while the others could not present the proper documents, police investigation showed.
The complaint against the five blue guards stems from the deaths of farmers Jessebel Amantillo Abayle, 34; Carmelina Garingo Amantillo, 57; Consolacion Esparcia Cadevida, 66, and Felimon Torres Molero, 66, last Feb. 21 in Barangay Napacao, Siaton.
Also wounded in that incident was another farmer, identified as Lito Prudencia de Jesus, 28.
The victims, with other farmers who escaped unharmed, were harvesting sugarcane at the disputed land in Napacao last Wednesday when the shooting incident happened.
The harvesters claimed to be petitioners for inclusion for the awarding of Certificate of Land Ownership by the Department of Agrarian Reform.
However, the provincial DAR Office here disclosed that only two of the five victims were petitioners while the names of the others could not be found in their data base.
CLOA holders of the land in question, meanwhile, insist that the victims and their companions did not have the right to harvest the sugarcane because it was the former who had planted the same.
The preliminary investigation is scheduled at 1:30 p.m. on March 6, said the Siaton police chief, Insp. Serion.
According to him, the suspects are now detained at the Siaton Police Station’s lock-up facility. (Judy Flores Partlow/PNA)
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