Abra Barangay health worker survives ambush
An Abra barangay health worker survived an ambuscade while heading home from her duty in the province’s battle against COVID19 Tuesday afternoon in Dolores, Abra.
Ana Maria Sagrada Macapagat, 45, from Cabaroan, Dolores town was rushed to the hospital after gunmen sprung from nowhere and started firing at her while she was aboard a tricycle going home from her sentinel duty at her village’s CoViD 19 task force past 5PM Tuesday.
Macapagat suffered gunshot wounds on her back and feet, while a unidentified barangay councilman driving the tricycle was unhurt. Cordillera police director Brig. Gen. Rwin Pagkalinawan said they are into deep probing the incident, which is the first violence against a health frontliner in the Cordillera region since the ECQ but already the fifth victim of gun-related violence in that province.
Only on Sunday night, Senator Ronald dela Rosa’s provincial coordinator in Abra – Leo Bermillo Barbosa, 42 — was murdered by an unidentified gunman Sunday night infront of his house in San Juan town.
Barbosa, a former barangay chairman of Guimba was reportedly talking with a cousin at around 8:15PM when his phone rang prompting him to go out of his house towards his parked car to receive the call. Moments later, a single gunfire was heard coming from the house opposite Barbosa’s home.
Then came the hysterical cries of the former barangay chairman’s wife beside her husband’s body sprawled face down on the ground swimming with blood. Barbosa, who suffered a lone gunshot wound below his left ear from a caliber 5.56 automatic rifle, was pronounced dead on arrival at the Abra Provincial Hospital by Dr. Belmor Bernal, Abra police information officer Inspector Raquel Alonzo said.
Abra governor Ma. Jocelyn Bernos had shrugged off Barbosa’s killing as “an isolated case and it could be a personal issue since the victim was no longer holding any government or elective position for the past 7 years.”
Barbosa earlier distributed several thermal scanners and face masks in San Juan and different towns in Abra as part of Sen. dela Rosa’s aide in the province, which had been on total lockdown for three weeks now, fight against COVID19.
But reliable sources claimed he had been accused of defying lockdown protocols and had been at odds with San Juan town Mayor Meynardo Bautista Jr., whom he also “bad-mouthed” at a social networking site” over supposed health protocol requirements of the San Juan town.
“5th Victim Of Violence” Macapagat is the fifth victim of gun-related violence in Abra since the ECQ, while Barbosa is the second former village chief gunned down in Abra in just four days. Armed men dragged away and gunned down former Bañacao barangay (Bangued) chairman Robert Buenafe Millare, 39, minutes after midnight on April 3.
Artemio Dulao/ABN
