ANGELES CITY – A police major apparently inadvertently shot dead his own mother and injured a nephew in a fit of rage against his live-in partner in their residence in Sitio Pader, Purok 6 in Barangay Pulung Maragul here at about 4:30 p.m. Monday.
A report from Police Station 3 identified the suspect as Maj. Dante Cabungcal. The victims were named as his mother Purita Cabungcal who was fatally shot, and his nephew Miquiteo Cabungcal, 17, who survived a gunshot wound and was reported to be healing in a local hospital.
The report said that the police major was having a loud quarrel with his live-in partner Connie Brillo, 40, in their room at their common residence. This prompted the suspect’s mother to knock on the room’s door apparently to pacify the couple, but the police major, apparently irked by the knocking, instead fired five shots towards the door and hit his mother and nephew.
The wounded nephew, however, was able to flee and seek help from neighbors.
Realizing what had happened, the police officer locked himself in the room with his live-in partner and refused to go out despite pleas from his colleagues from the police force, including members of Police Station 3 and the local SWAT, the report said.
It wasn’t clear whether the suspect hostaged his live-in partner, but it took acting city police chief Col. Joyce Patrick Sangalang and, at his request, the presence of a mediaperson, ABC-CBN local editor John Mark Guda, to make him finally surrender with his partner unharmed.
Recovered from the suspect’s room were one pistol Steyr Mannlicher 9mm with serial number 043548 made in Austria, one magazine containing four live ammunitions, and one Pietro Beretta 9mm with serial number N54905Z with one magazine containing 15 live ammunitions.
SOCO team led by Lt. Richard Frias gathered nine fired cartridge cases and nine deformed slugs, both for 9mm caliber.
The mother’s remains were brought to Pangilinan Funeral Parlor, even as members of the immediate members of the family refused autopsy. The suspect was detained at Police Station 6 pending the immediate family’s decision to file formal charges against him.
