Two men arrested in Bonawon, Siaton Thursday for allegedly plotting to kill Gov. Roel Degamo will be charged with Illegal Possession of Firearms and Explosives, Sr. Supt. Edward Carranza, PNP Provincial Director, announced Friday.
The two, German Escora and Anthony Eleuterio, were picked up by security forces of Gov. Degamo and the Bonawon PNP outpost along the national highway near Km 69 around 6 p.m.
Among the items Police confiscated from them were one Ingram machine pistol with two magazines of live ammunition, one cal. 45 pistol with one magazine of live ammunition, two hand grenades, two cellphones, and a sketch of the barangay of Bonawon, showing the house of Gov. Degamo.
While the Governor lives in Dumaguete City most of the time, he was in Bonawon that night. Degamo decided to spend the night in Bonawon after visiting barangay Amio in Sta. Catalina earlier that Thursday.
Degamo, who was elected as the number one Provincial Board Member in the 2010 elections, earlier revealed that he had been receiving death threats mostly through text messages since he assumed the governorship by succession in January, following the deaths of two governors before him.
The suspects were brought to Degamo’s house for questioning, where they denied that they were in Bonawon to assassinate the Governor. One of the suspects, Escora, admitted to reporters that he had earlier served time for robbery. Police said Escora had also been jailed once for violating the Comelec gun ban.
Escora said he and Eleuterio came to Bonawon to look for a job. Eleuterio said he and Escora were in Bonawon to contact a certain Arturo Aliabo in order to start a swertres operation there.
Swertres is three-number lottery game.
When presented before reporters at the Provincial PNP Office at Camp Francisco Fernandez in Agan-an, Sibulan, the two suspects denied ownership of the guns and explosives. They also said they were repeatedly stepped on by policemen inside a dark room at the Governor’s house in Bonawon, to force them to admit that they were sent by a provincial official to assassinate the Governor.
NBI Negros Oriental Chief Dominador Cimafranca, who was in the press conference at Camp Fernandez, said the names of the two suspects also cropped up in relation to their investigation in the 2009 killing of Department of Agrarian Reform lawyer Eleazar Casipong, the 2010 killing of former Miss Dumaguete Ann Rose Neri, as well as other incidents.
He said they will run the firearms through ballistics tests to match them against the bullets recovered from the other crime scenes.
Sr. Supt. Carranza said the police has not been remiss in securing the Chief Executive of the Province.