The killing, according to a report by Senior Inspector Romualdo Lopez, officer-in-charge of the Laur police, happened at 2:30 p m. Five men armed with 5.56 rifles were suspects in the carnage.
Killed were Elejo Bardado, 53, driver of a passenger bus; Gaudencio Bagalay, 58, farmer; Emerenciana dela Rosa, 58, farmer, who were all from Barangay Bagting in Gabaldon town; and Violeta Milan, 57, overseas Filipino worker from Barangay Mapalad, Sta. Rosa town who was a sister of Emerenciana. Wounded in the left leg was Angelita Milan, 50, also from Gabaldon town.
Published reports said the massacre site was within the Fort Magsaysay Military Reservation. But authorities of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division (7th ID) clarifi ed that the site of the massacre Friday is no longer part of the Fort Magsaysay Military Reservation.
“Upon verification, it was revealed that the area has actually been turned over to the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) by virtue of Executive Order 448, and 7th ID no longer holds jurisdiction over it,” part of the statements from the 7th ID public information office said.
The statement also included a denial to insinuation that the Army is involved in the said killing. It assured that Major General Angelito de Leon, 7th ID commander, has directed his command “to coordinate with the PNP to support the investigation being conducted in order to identify and arrest the suspects.”
The command said that as soon as it received a report about the shooting incident, an army team was dispatched to provide assistance to the victims and in the conduct of investigation by the police.
Police said the gun-wielding men suddenly appeared near where the hut was being built and fi red at the victims indiscriminately. The gunmen finished them off at close range as they (the victims) sought cover under a bamboo bed.
The victims from Gabaldon were among 21 families who settled at Sitio Minalkot hoping to become CARP beneficiaries when their village was hit by landslide, according to one of the families who transferred to that mountainous sub-village.
Gabaldon town is about 28 kilometers east of Laur.
Land dispute was attributed by the police as strong motive behind Friday’s massacre in Barangay San Isidro. The village, one of five villages in Laur which were designated as resettlement sites for Mt. Pinatubo eruption victims, had a history of violence suspected to be caused by land dispute.
On July 9, 2010 Pascual Guevarra, 78, a farmer leader, was killed inside his house at 4:30 p.m. by unidentified gunman. His killing was not solved.
The other villages in Laur which were under coverage of the 3,100 hectares declared as resettlement area were Sagana, Nauzon, Canantong and San Jose in 1991.
In a statement in 2010, then Lt. Col. Hermilo Barrios, judge advocate general of the 7th ID, said that only 1,900 hectares of the military reservation in Laur donated by the Department of National Defense was used by the Mt. Pinatubo Commission as resettlement site.
He said that then Budget Secretary Mario Relampagos of the MPC returned the remaining 1,200 hectares to the 7th ID.
Barrios then said that many of the claimants of 1,200 hectares in barangay San Isidro were “only pseudo-farmers acting as fronts for other personalities.”
The military offi cial was then explaining that the 7th ID was not engaged in landgrabbing as “the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is the one losing land to squatters and not the other way around.
“The military never approved the transfer of the areas to the farmers. In the fi rst place, military reservations are exempted from the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and from any land reform program Barrios said then.
