Balaoan town logo.
BALAOAN, La Union -- The Balaoan Police is looking at all angles for the possible motive and arrest of the riding-in-tandem gunmen who riddled the house of the town’s municipal engineer here with bullets Wednesday night.
In an interview Thursday, Capt. Juanito Buaron, town’s police chief, said the shooting incident happened at 7:42 p.m. at the house of Fernando Uy, 53, in Barangay Cabua-an.
The motorcycle-riding suspects, he said, were caught by the closed-circuit television camera (CCTV) firing at the house of Uy.
“We recovered 14 empty shells of M16 rifle and two deformed slugs. The bullets went through the outside wall of the house and one entered the house. Fortunately, no one was reported injured because of the incident,” Buaron said.
“We are working on identifying the suspects through the CCTV footages, although these are not that clear as the suspects used their motorcycle’s light to affect the quality of the footages,” he said.
Buaron said they have yet to determine if this an election-related case.
“But we are still investigating if this would fall under election-related incident. We are still closely coordinating with Uy if there may be other possible motive to the incident,” Buaron said.
Uy is a cousin of incumbent mayor Aleli Concepcion and board member Carlo Concepcion. Mayor Concepcion and her father, vice mayor Al-Fred Concepcion, were ambushed November last year, which resulted in the death of the vice mayor and one of their aides.
Balaoan is one of the two towns (the other one is Agoo) in La Union that have been placed under red category (areas of grave concern) in the election watch list due to prior election-related violence recorded.
“We have increased our checkpoints and patrolling to ensure the safety of the people. We also ask the public to report to us if they know any information about the incident,” Buaron said. (PNA)
