An 18-year-old man was shot dead while asleep early Wednesday morning inside his Quezon City home in an attack involving six assailants, two of whom were later killed when chased by the police.
The Quezon City Police District (QCPD) said Alwyn Padilla, a garbage collector, was shot three times at his house on Visayas Street, Barangay Payatas B, around 3:30 a.m.
About 10 minutes later, a team from the QCPD Station 6 (Batasan) caught up with the assailants who avoided a checkpoint as they were fleeing on three motorbikes.
Two of the gunmen were shot and later pronounced dead on arrival at East Avenue Medical Center, according to the incident report prepared by P03 Ronald Cornejo of QCPD鈥檚 Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit (CIDU).
Still unidentified at press time, one of them was described to be about 30 to 35 years old, and the other about 25 to 30 years old.
The other four assailants were able to escape and remained at large.
Chief Insp. Elmer Monsalve, head of the CIDU homicide section, said the six motorcycle-riding men were the group behind the killing of Padilla.
After the attack at Padilla鈥檚 house, they refused to stop at a checkpoint set up by eight members of Station 6 on Molave Street, who also noticed that their bikes had no license plates.
According to Monsalve, the police recovered three loaded pistols from the two slain gunmen, while the attending nurse at EAMC reported that one of them kept five sachets of 鈥渟habu鈥� in his pocket.
Padilla鈥檚 family maintained that Alwyn was not into illegal drugs but his mother Maricris and brother Allan Jay have been detained in Camp Karingal and Bicutan, respectively, since October 2016 on drug-related charges.
In an interview, Edwin Dumlao, the victim鈥檚 uncle, said Padilla, his mother and his brother were not on the barangay鈥檚 drug watch list.
鈥淭he gunmen must be randomly picking their targets,鈥� Dumlao said, as he suspected that the killers were looking for past surrenderers in 鈥淥plan Tokhang,鈥� the government鈥檚 antidrug campaign that identifies drug users and pushers in a community.