GAPAN CITY—Police are looking into politics as one of the motives behind last Wednesday’s killing of city councilor Sonny San Jose and his driver inside a farm amid reports linking Mayor Emerson Pascual to the attack.
Pascual laughed off the accusations, saying he considers San Jose a friend.
Police Supt. Peter Madria, Gapan police station commander, said that politics is one of the angles they are eyeing in the twin murders of San Jose and his driver Antonio Punzal.
“Yes we are looking into politics as one of the motives. You have to look into that because he [San Jose] is a politician,” Madria said, adding other motives being looked into are love triangle and business rivalry.
San Jose’s elder brother Lauro sought justice for his slain brother, saying authorities should exert all-out efforts to find the killers and bring them before the bars of justice.
He described the slain councilor as kind and reserved and with no known enemies. “That is why he goes around without any bodyguard because according to him, he has not wronged anyone,” Lauro, the eldest in a brood of 12, said of Sonny, the youngest at the latter’s wake at St. Peter’s here.
San Jose, 41, and Punzal were inside the Mini-Game Fowl Farm of businessman Roel Francisco in Barangay Mangino here when motorcycle-riding gunmen barged inside the compound and gunned them down. They both died on the spot.