Cebu City cops pursue leads from netizens

This enhanced image that was grabbed from a security camera shows the face of the gunman who killed lawyer Rex Fernandez last August 26 in Barangay Guadalupe, Cebu City. | Photo courtesy of CCPO

CEBU CITY, Philippines –The police have been getting several tips since they released an enhanced photo of the man suspected to be behind the killing of lawyer Rex Fernandez.

Police Lieutenant Colonel Wilbert Parilla, deputy director for operations of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO), said they are now in the processing of verifying these information hoping that these would lead them to the location of the still unidentified gunman.

READ: CCPO, NBI release enhanced image of Fernandez’s killerFor now,

Parillla said they also continue to pursue personal grudge as motive in the killing of Fernandez, a known human rights lawyer in Cebu.

READ: Police looking into ‘inside job’ in killing of lawyer Rex Fernandez

Last September 7, local police and the National Bureau of Investigation in Central Visayas (NBI-7) released an enhanced image of the gunman which they screen grabbed from a CCTV footage.

Since then, Parilla said, they have been getting several possible names of the suspect from informants, but these will all be subjected to validation by their intelligence unit.

Parilla said they wanted to make sure that whoever they will arrest in the future is the right suspect.  They also wanted to prevent the use of information that may mislead the police investigators.

He added that the four individuals, whom Fernandez named in a social media post as the people who wanted him dead, already went to see police investigators to issue their respective statements on the lawyer’s killing.

READ: Fernandez names possible killers in FB post, police form SITG

All of the four also promised to cooperate in the ongoing investigation.

But he said that it will be up to members of the Special Investigation Task Group (SITG) that is now investigating the case to decide as to whether or not these individuals should already be removed from their list of Persons of Interest (POIs) in the killing of Atty. Fernandez.

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/ dcb