BUREAU of Customs officials and employees who have been living in fear over several targeted gun attacks that has claimed the lives of 3 customs frontline employees and seriously wounded 2 others, hope they can now put their mind to rest after the gunman allegedly contracted to gun them down was killed while undergoing interrogation last May 20, 2022.
A report from Station 13 (Baseco) of the Manila Police District (MPD) stated that Police Executive Master Sergeant (PEMS) Celedonio Astejada Caunceran Jr., assigned at the District Headquarters Support Unit (DHSU), Quezon City Police District, allegedly tried to grab the service firearm of Customs Special Agent Jovan Escueta Lugtu while pretending to use the toilet.
Caunceran, the report stated, managed to get possession of the gun of Lugtu during a scuffle and started shooting but was instead shot in return by Customs Intelligence Officer Elizer Layag Mangili.
The cop-suspect was brought by the CIIS at the Gat Andres Bonifacio Hospital in Tondo but was declared ‘DOA’ (dead on arrival) by the attending physicians.
Cauceran was undergoing tactical interrogation at the CIIS office at the Port of Manila (POM) that went till past 9:00 pm when the incident happened.
He was arrested earlier that day by the CIIS at an eatery near the Manila International Container Port (MICP) after he was reported by a security guard as “matching” the description of the gunman behind the attacks targeting customs personnel.
A ranking customs official familiar with the case but who declined to be named for lack of clearance from Comm. Rey Leonardo Guerrero to speak to the media, told Pinoy Exposé they have gathered “sufficient proof” to pin down the rogue policeman.
“We have CCTV footages and we have been tracking his movements for several months now before he was arrested,” the official said. “All the evidence we painstakingly and patiently gathered thru hard work for several months now point to him as the gunman,” the source added.
From Caunceran’s cellphone, the BOC also found the pictures of the 5 customs personnel who were earlier shot (see details below) but also, the purported text conversation between the policeman and the suspected mastermind of the attacks who goes by the initial, ‘JT.’
The series of violent incidents remain shrouded in mystery until Caunceran’s arrest and they earlier even raised suspicion that the reason why the incidents remain unsolved for several months now is because they have “official blessing” or impliedly sanctioned by some government officials.
From the files of Pinoy Exposé
The spate of targeted attacks involving customs officials and employees begun before Christmas last year, some three weeks after Comm. Guerrero and the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) received a letter of complaint listing the names of 14 alleged “corrupt” customs officials and personnel on November 29, 2021.
The first name in the list, lawyer Melvin Tan, was repeatedly shot by a lone gunman riding in a motorcycle while he was on his way home. Luckily, he survived.
However, customs chief appraiser Eudes Nerpio, who was also in the list, was not as lucky, after he was shot dead in Binondo, Manila last January 7, 2022 (Pinoy Exposé, January 8, 2022).
Just a week later, on January 14, 2022, Ryan Balite Difontorum, survived a gun attack in Sampaloc, Manila (Pinoy Expose, January 15, 2022).
Another customs officer Gil Manlapaz, who was not in the list, was shot dead near his house in Sta. Ana, Manila, last February 11, 2022. He was declared dead on arrival at the hospital (Pinoy Exposé, February 14, 2022).
After a hiatus of several months, the assassin struck again last April 4, 2022, this time targeting customs investigator, Atty. Joseph Samuel Zapata, who managed to survive an ambush along Macapagal Boulevard, Pasay City.
The violent attacks against the Bureau of Customs also include a grenade being thrown at the Customs Police (ESS) headquarters at the POM last January 29, 2022 (Pinoy Exposé, January 29, 2022) and another grenade being thrown at the residence in Quezon City of Deputy Commissioner for Enforcement (DCE) Atty. Teddy Raval, last February 9, 2022 (Pinoy Exposé, February 9, 2022)
Breakthrough and mystery
Although Caunceran is now dead, the customs official maintained they have made a “major breakthrough” in the case, claiming the suspect was about to sign an “affidavit” affirming the identity of the person who contracted him to do not only the killing, but also the bombing of the ESS compound.
“He is being paid P200,000 per killing,” the source averred; “he is also behind the throwing of the grenade at the ESS compound,” the source added.
Both Caunceran and the yet-to-be named mastermind, the source said, personally knows each other from their previous stint together at an anti-smuggling agency of the government.
But as the source also conceded, there is yet another “mystery” they have to uncover.
This, after the BOC received an old news article reporting on a deadly vehicular accident last October 26, 2017 along San Mateo Road near the Batasan Complex in Quezon City.
The news article said among the four identified fatalities was one ‘SPO2 Celedonio Caunceran Jr.’
The source, a former bemedaled intelligence officer of the Philippine Army, believed the suspect may have “faked” his own death thru that news report in order to continue with his criminal activities.
The source noted that even urban assassins of the communist New People’s Army (NPA) that they used to chase when they were in the military service also resort to faking their own deaths to misled authorities.
“If you are officially ‘dead,’ no one would be interested in looking for you. But we are still checking,” the source added.