Davao del Sur exec denies ‘lost’ firearms linked to supporter’s slay
DAVAO CITY—Davao del Sur Vice Gov. Marc Douglas Cagas IV refuted insinuations that the firearms he declared lost last month had anything to do with the guns used in the killing of his close supporter Oscar “Dodong” Bucol Jr., the chair of Barangay Tres de Mayo in Digos City.
Cagas said official records and forensic findings showed the bullets recovered from the crime scene did not match or bear any ballistic relation to the firearms that were the subject of the affidavit of loss he filed on Nov. 28, or three days after Bucol’s killing.
“This claim is factually false, reckless and unsupported by evidence,” Cagas said in a statement released by the office of lawyer Israelito Torreon, legal counsel of the Bucol family, on Monday.
“Any attempt to link those firearms to the killing is baseless and misleading and serves only to distort the facts and inflame public opinion,” Cagas said in the statement.
Instead, the vice governor asked those spreading “unfounded insinuations” to submit themselves to lawful inquiry and fully cooperate with law enforcement authorities. “I am constrained to state that those who may have any motive against Kapitan Dodong should be subjected to proper investigation,” he said.
Moving shooter
Bucol was shot in the midst of his Facebook live podcast at his garage on Nov. 25. The barangay captain, a close friend of the vice governor, criticized on his Facebook page local officials, mostly political opponents of Cagas.
Ely Leano, spokesperson of the National Bureau of Investigation Southeastern Mindanao Regional Office, doing a parallel investigation on Bucol’s killing, said the village chief was hit on the upper left part of his chest by a high-powered long firearm, which has yet to be identified in the absence of slugs or empty shells in the crime scene.
