COTABATO CITY (Mindanao Exminer / Mar. 1, 2014) – A Filipino town mayor died from heart attack following an ambush by armed men in the southern Philippines, an army spokesman said Saturday.
Capt. Alberto Caber, of the Eastern Mindanao Command, said Mayor George Cho Perrett of Maitum town in Sarangani province, was driving his car with his wife Elsie Lucille and a maid, when gunmen attacked them in the village of Bugo late Friday.
He said Perrett and his maid were both wounded in the attack, but the mayor eventually succumbed to heart attack at dawn Saturday in hospital in General Santos City where he was rushed.
“The victims were immediately brought to Saint Elizabeth Hospital in General Santos City for medical treatment, however, Mayor Perrett expired at about 2.30 a.m. due to cardiac arrest,” Caber told the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner, adding, the politician’s wife was unscathed from the ambush.
Caber said the mayor was heading home from program at the municipal gymnasium when gunmen ambushed him. “Recovered from the crime scene were fired cartridges of M16 automatic rifle and .45-caliber pistol. Mayor Perrett was personally driving his car and with no bodyguards when the ambush occurred,” he said.
He said soldiers from the 27th Infantry Battalion and the local police force launched an operation to track down the attackers.
Caber said authorities were investigating the attack. “We still don’t know who was behind the ambush,” he said.
No individual or group claimed responsibility for the ambush, but the province is a known stronghold of communist New People’s Army rebels fighting for the establishment of a separate state in the country.
Just recently, NPA rebels also ambushed Mayor Jaime Mahimpit, of President Roxas town in North Cotabato province, who was with a convoy of police and military forces. Three of the politician’s police bodyguards – SPO4 Hector Castillo, PO3 Joemer Ilagan and PO2 Joselax Avena – were wounded in the attack.
The NPA, which owned the ambush, said the target of the attack was soldiers and policemen, and not the politician. “The police and army elements were legitimate targets, contrary to reports that Mayor Mahimpit was the object of the punitive action linked to revolutionary tax collection,” a rebel spokesperson Isabel Fermiza said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examienr. (Mindanao Examiner)
20