While waiting for start of his murder trial
By Tina Santos
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:21:00 01/30/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- A political career long splattered with blood ended Tuesday outside a Manila courtroom in a blaze of gunfire.
Wearing a light blue, collared shirt emblazoned with the word “POLICE” at the back, a lone gunman shot dead former Mayor Rey Yap of Sapang Dalaga, Misamis Occidental, while the latter was waiting in the fourth floor corridor of Manila City Hall for the start of his murder trial, police said.
Two other people -- including Yap’s bodyguard and a woman -- were wounded in the 9 a.m. attack that sparked a stampede among City Hall employees, police said.
The gunman, who was armed with a .45-cal. pistol, escaped in the confusion.
Yap died after sustaining four gunshot wounds in the chest and a fifth one in the nape.
The 45-year-old Yap belonged to a clan that had been at the vortex of political violence in Misamis Occidental province. He was the sixth member of his family to be killed -- three of the previous killings were linked to politics.
Yap himself had once been convicted of murder but the verdict was reversed on appeal.
Police said they were looking into possible security lapses that might have enabled the assassin to slip in and out of City Hall without being detected.
“It was a clear political vendetta,” Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim said, when asked what might have been the motive for Tuesday’s killing. “Former Mayor Yap was facing murder charges filed by the family of his political opponent in his hometown.”
Lim said there had been a previous attempt on Yap’s life.
“He was also ambushed outside [Manila] City Hall but managed to survive,” Lim said.
But Manila’s police director, Chief Supt. Roberto Rosales, said that a political vendetta was only one of the angles police were looking at.
“There had been a long history of violence between the Yaps and the Cebedos [a political clan in Misamis Occidental]. There have been scores of killing on both sides. But that’s just one of the angles we’re checking,” Rosales said.
Bodyguard shot
Yap was standing outside Room 420 -- the sala of Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 19 Judge Zenaida Daguna -- when he was gunned down.
One of the wounded, Peter Sabijon, was described by police as one of Yap’s six close-in security escorts. He was wounded in the body and remained in the intensive care unit of the Manila Doctors Hospital up to Tuesday night.

The other shooting victim was Bella Santos-Nocum, a member of the Crusade Against Violence, who was about to attend a hearing in an adjacent courtroom. She suffered gunshot wounds in the left breast, left leg and right arm, according to her fellow CAV member Herminia Mendoza.
She was taken to the Philippine General Hospital.
Gunman on the run
“I saw the (gunman) running away while holding a gun with one hand and covering his face with the other,” an investigator quoted Jaime Velasquez, a 52-year-old shoeshine boy who was standing near the crime scene, as saying.
Senior Jail Officer Eduardo Garcia said he also saw the gunman running away but he could not give chase because he was guarding several detainees at the time.
Yap’s bodyguards, as well as jail and police officers providing security to other detainees, failed to respond apparently because firearms are not allowed in court, investigators said.
Empty elevator shaft
Tension gripped City Hall as rumors spread that the gunman had run to an elevator. Members of the Special Weapons and Tactics team forcibly opened the elevator -- but found it empty.
The MPD released an artist’s sketch of the gunman based on the description provided by several witnesses.
He was described as between 30 and 35 years old, about 200 lbs in weight and 5’8” to 5’9” in height, sporting clean-cut hair with a fair complexion.
Mayor Lim and Chief Supt. Rosales were investigating apparent security lapses.
Security clampdown
“There are police assigned in courts but these are roving policemen,” Rosales said. “We’ll try to find out how the gunman managed to smuggle a gun and if he was indeed wearing a police shirt as claimed by some witnesses.”
“We’re trying to determine where the laxity happened and who could be held responsible.”
Lim said the city government intended to buy at least three metal detectors and surveillance cameras to be installed at the main entrances.
He also ordered mandatory searches of all visitors for firearms and other deadly weapons.
Many entrances, exits
Lim, who promptly ordered the cancellation of business transactions at City Hall after the incident, conceded there might have been security lapses as the building had several entrances and exits.
He said the 20 in-house security personnel were not enough to guard the premises considering the large number of people who came in daily.
Bloody politics
Having dominated politics in the western Misamis Occidental towns of Balingao and Sapang Dalaga for more than four decades, the Yaps clashed with the Cebedos in the 1990s when they tried to expand their political clout in the nearby town of Rizal in Zamboanga del Norte province.
In 2001, Yap and his brother Roy were found guilty by a Manila court of masterminding the 1992 assassination of Victorio “Boy” Cebedo, who was then mayor of Rizal, and were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Cebedo was shot and killed during a political rally. He and Roy Yap were contesting the Rizal mayoral race.
Cebedo’s brother, Perfecto, ran in his slain brother’s place and won. But Perfecto was assassinated in Alabang, Muntinlupa in 2002, while the Yaps were already serving their life terms.
In between the killing of the two Cebedos, a third brother was wounded in an ambush in Manila after attending the Yaps’ trial.
In March last year, Rey Yap was ordered released by the Court of Appeals after it reversed the lower court’s ruling sentencing him to life imprisonment. The appellate court said the guilt of the accused had not been proven due to the conflicting accounts of the shooting.
5 other pending cases
Rey Yap had five other pending cases in other courts in Oroquieta City and Muntinlupa City, among other places. He was also facing a graft case in the Ombudsman.
Court employees said Yap’s hearing Tuesday was in connection with the killing of a certain Julie Ontolan, allegedly a rebel returnee.
The Yaps’ father, Rino, was killed in the 1980s by suspected communist New People’s Army rebels. Their mother, Pacita, a former mayor of the town and provincial board member of Misamis Occidental, is a suspect in another murder and is still at large.
She was serving as mayor when the warrant for her arrest came out, forcing her to flee and abandon the mayorship. She is believed to have left the country.
The family’s political fortunes soon declined and the elections last year completed their political wipeout. With a report from Ryan D. Rosauro, Inquirer Mindanao