POLICE were holding two jail guards for questioning in the shooting of tabloid photo journalist Alberto Orsolino, who was killed in Caloocan City Tuesday morning.
Orsolino, 43, covered Malacañang for Saksi, but police said yesterday that his killing was probably not work-related.
Orsolino was shot dead in the Hannibal gas station on Letre Road after the scooter-riding gunmen chased him from his car at 9:30 a.m. on May 16.
Metro Manila police Chief Vidal Querol told reporters in Camp Crame that Orsolino was most likely killed because of a grudge held by the family of a suspected drug pusher who was shot dead in May 2005.
Querol said the family of the suspected pusher believed that Orsolino, a barangay councilor, had a hand in his death, but had declined to take any legal remedies.
Police were withholding the identities of the suspects, who were identified by a witness to the daytime shooting.
At Orsolino’s wake, a cousin told Standard Today that the victim had received a warning not to leave the house that day, but he left anyway.
Minutes after he left, the cousin heard several shots and a neighbor told him that Orsolino had been shot.
Caloocan City police chief Senior Supt. Geronimo Reside said the assassins had probably staked out Orsolino’s residence hours before the shooting.
He said the killers were most likely amateurs because their guns had probably jammed when they first fired on the journalist.
One of the suspects said he was at work at the Navotas municipal jail when the shooting occurred, but he refused to take a paraffin test to see if he had fired a gun in the last three days. He was brought to the Caloocan police headquarters by Chief Insp. Gerald Bantag, deputy jail warden.
One of the jail guards was said to be a relative of a certain Frank Sabe Jr., who was shot dead in the terrace of his home on May 18, 2005. Caloocan police identified Sabe as an informant.
A neighbor who asked not to be named said he heard one of Sabe’s kin say his killer would suffer the same fate before his relative’s first death anniversary, which is today.
In the wake of the latest killing, Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel chided Malacañang for doing nothing to help the families of slain journalists.
