HAIL TO THE CHIEF. Two policemen from the Guihulngan City Police Office stand guard beside the coffin of their fallen chief, Supt. Arnel Arpon, as residents of the city come to pay him their last respect.
(CDN PHOTO/Benjie Talisic)
ANNALYN Arpon was inconsolable.
If it were up to her, she would want President Rodrigo Duterte to declare martial law all over the country and put an end to the New People’s Army (NPA).
Annalyn, 42, lost her husband Arnel to an NPA attack.
Arnel is Superintendent Arnel Arpon, the police chief of Guihulngan town. He was killed with five other policemen while they were responding to a call for help from City Councilor Edison dela Rita, who was earlier on Friday was wayward and wounded in an attack by the same group of rebels.
Annalyn said she still could not accept that her husband, only 46 years old and had served the police service faithfully and honestly, was gone.
Annalyn would now have to raise on her own their three sons, ages 17, 13 and 9.
Annalyn said she was also grieving for the other policemen killed in the NPA ambush in Barangay Magsaysay on Friday, as she has also gotten to know them.
She said her husband and the other victims – SPO1 Jesael Ancheta, PO3 Leovic Agusto, PO2 Alvin Bulandres, PO2 Alfredo Nicasio Tabilon and PO2 Alfredo Enrique – all deserve justice and she hoped that the President would secure it for them.
The remains of the six policemen have been brought to the Guihulngan City Police Station for the wake. Interment has yet to be announced.
Supt. Carlos Lacuesta, the deputy provincial police director of Negros Oriental who has now taken over the helm of the Guihulngan police, was equally distraught by the death of Arpon and the other policemen.
Arpon and Lacuesta belong to the same class in the Philippine National Police Academy (PNPA), graduating in 1998.
The both served the Philippine National Police’s elite commando unit, the Special Action Force (SAF), at the same time for two years before they separated and headed different police units.
Arpon, he said, headed the Guihulngan police for only two months before his death. Before that, he was assigned at the Police Regional Office of the Negros Island Region (PRO-18) based in Bacolod City in Negros Occidental.
Lacuesta said the death of Arpon was a big loss to the police as he was an upright man, a good leader and a good father to his sons.
Senior Supt. Henry Biñas, the provincial police director of Negros Oriental, said he has formed Task Force Group Guihulngan to speed up the investigation in the death of the six policeman and Michael Jambalos, the civilian bodyguard of Councilor Dela Rita who was also killed in the first attack.
Annalyn, who lived with her sons in Bacolod City, said the last time her husband went home was last June 17 for the blessing of their newly renovated house.
Since then, she said, her husband had not gone home because of the heightened alert status in his station in Guihulngan.
But she said she had been coming to Guihulngan to visit him, the last time of which was last Monday, or four days before he was killed.
She said she never thought it was the last time she would see her husband alive.