RIZAL, Nueva Ecija – An alleged communist rebel wounded in a bloody encounter with combined police and military forces in Barangay Estrella here last year died of complications in a government hospital in Cabanatuan City at about 6:30 a.m. Monday, according to the police.
Police said Danilo Sagun, 45, of Barangay Estrella this town, died while receiving medical attention at the Dr. Paulino J. Garcia Memorial Research and Medical Center. His body was transferred to the hospital morgue and being secured by joint personnel of the Rizal police station and first provincial mobile field force “together with the relatives of the suspect.”
“The suspect suffered complications due to community-acquired pneumonia,” police said adding his immune system might have been compromised due to “severe malnutrition.”
Sagun was among the suspected rebels that engaged in a firefight elements of the Philippine Army’s 84th Infantry Battalion and provincial police at on Nov. 14, 2019.
Also wounded during the encounter was 33-year-old Redsa Balatan, reportedly a political instructor of Kilusang Larangang Guerilla Sierra Madre that operates in Northern Nueva Ecija and parts of Aurora province.
A graduate of the University of the Philippines Extension Program in Pampanga, Balatan is the wife of Gerald Salonga who was killed in an encounter on Sept. 2, 2018 in Barangay Villa, Maria, Aurora province.
Balatan has been released from the hospital before the yearend, according to reports.
Two other alleged guerillas were killed in the Nov. 14 encounter that also led to the recovery of two M-16 rifles, three .45 pistols and other war materiel.
