Radyo Mo Nationwide and Tatak News
January 5, 2012, in General Santos City, Philippines
Guarin, 41, a block-time radio broadcaster with Radyo Mo Nationwide and publisher of small local newspaper Tatak News, was shot and killed in the evening by unidentified motorcycle-riding assailants while driving home with his wife, Lyn Guarin, and nine-year-old daughter in General Santos City on the southern island of Mindanao, according to local and international news reports.
The assailants first fired on Guarin's car at the city's Purok Sunrise and Naval Subdivision intersection, hitting him in the head and his wife in the arm. According to local press reports quoting his wife, Guarin then stopped and fled the vehicle on foot but was shot several times by two pursuing gunmen. He was declared dead on arrival at General Santos City Hospital, according to the reports.
"I could no longer count the number of shots made by the suspects," Guarin's wife told the Inquirer newspaper. "But I saw my husband lying on the ground helpless, pleading before the suspects not to kill him. His pleading fell on deaf ears."
The day after the killing, police investigator Gerald Mark Oliver Jubelag told local reporters that Guarin was hit six times by bullets fired from a .45 caliber handgun. Jubelag said the two assailants were unmasked and fled the scene of the crime on a white Honda XRM motorcycle.
But on January 9, Chief Superintendent Benjardi Mantele, director of the Region 12 police, told local media that there were indications that a personal grudge could be the motive for the murder of Guarin and his death had nothing to do with his work as a journalist. The Associated Press quoted Fred Solinap, Guarin's co-anchor in their program on herbal medicine, as saying Guarin was puzzled by a text message he got during their radio broadcast on Tuesday. The message, which Guarin read on air, warned him in the local dialect not to leave the station or he would be killed. Guarin had lost a 2010 election bid for city councilor, and had been a combative radio announcer at another station before his electoral race, AP and local news sources said.
Motive Unconfirmed: CPJ is investigating to determine whether the death was work-related.
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