Cops secure witnesses in killing of Isabela poll exec

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcya - Witnesses to the killing of a provincial Commission on Elections (Comelec) official in Isabela province have surfaced to help authorities file criminal charges against the suspected killers of lawyer Michael Valdez, a ranking police official said Tuesday. Region 2 police head Chief Superintendent Roberto Damian said a witness who works as a guest relation officer in one of the town’s beer joints and identified only as a certain Tricia, had confessed being with suspects Giovanni Taccad-Mendoza and Michael Magdangal at the County Estate Drive-in Hotel in Tumauini town before the crime was committed. Tricia said that while on their way to the group’s rented house in the capital town of Ilagan, some 30 kilometers away from Tumauini, they stopped by at a waiting shed where Mendoza and Magdangal met with Jessie Carlos Calanday. It was then at the rented house that she allegedly heard the group talking about Valdez while drinking. Tricia is now under the government’s witness protection program after reportedly receiving threats from other gang members who are still on the loose, Damian said. Another witness, a room boy, told authorities that one of the suspects whom police have identified as Harry Taccad went to the hotel and asked for Magdangal and Mendoza. On Tuesday, a complaint of murder was filed by assistant prosecutor Don Antonio Marie Abogado before the Isabela Prosecutor’s Office in Ilagan against Calanday a.k.a. George, 28, computer technician and a resident of Nuesa village in Roxas town; and Taccad a.k.a. Hur, 48, a resident of Minanga, Tumauini. Their three other cohorts - Giovanni Taccad-Mendoza a.k.a. Vanni, Michael Magdangal a.k.a. Lito and Eric Alzate - remain at large. Authorities suspect Mendoza could be the gunman while Magdangal and Alzate may have acted as lookouts. They did not elaborate. In a radio interview, Abogado said he is confident that the case is tight, noting the pieces of evidence against the five suspects were "strong." Among the evidence gathered so far were the suspects' names which registered at the captured gang member’s cell phones and text messages showing their culpability to the crime along with a statement from the owner of the group’s temporary hideout. Valdez was gunned down dawn last November 14 inside the hotel which he also manages. [See: Isabela poll supervisor shot dead in hotel] Comelec officials reveal that the poll supervisor may have incurred the ire of some people whose wishes the victim have turned down in the performance of his duty. [See: Comelec: Slain Isabela poll official may have 'made enemies'] - GMANews.TV