IBP-NL Condemns Killing of Apayao Comelec Head

The local and regional chapters of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) condemned the ambush that killed a Commission on Elections (Comelec) official in Apayao on Thursday, Sept. 7, even as the Comelec regional director moved to coordinate with the police to immediately solve the case. Lawyer Julius Angadol, 35, Comelec provincial supervisor in Apayao, was shot dead by unidentified men while on his way to his office in Luna town after driving his wife to work at past 7:00 a.m.

BY ARTHUR L. ALLAD-IW
Northern Dispatch
Posted by Bulatlat

BAGUIO CITY — The local and regional chapters of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) condemned the ambush that killed a Commission on Elections (Comelec) official in Apayao on Thursday, Sept. 7, even as the Comelec regional director moved to coordinate with the police to immediately solve the case.

Lawyer Julius Angadol, 35, Comelec provincial supervisor in Apayao, was shot dead by unidentified men while on his way to his office in Luna town after driving his wife to work at past 7:00 a.m.

Mortally wounded, Angadol was apparently able to drive away from the crime scene, some three kilometers away from the Apayao-Cagayan boundary. He was found dead inside his car, which slammed into a roadside tree. He sustained two gunshot wounds on the chest.

“We condemn in the strongest possible term the dastardly ambush of Angadol,” said lawyer Abelardo Estrada, president of IBP Baguio-Benguet and concurrent governor of IBP Northern Luzon, in a phone interview with NORDIS.

Estrada, who was in a national meeting of IBP governors, urged the Philippine National Police (PNP) to bring Angadol’s killers to justice. “We cannot sacrifice the legal profession through the loss of the lives of our members,” he added.

The IBP-NL governor mourned the loss of “a young lawyer who is committed to implement laws, particularly election laws.” Estrada said Angadol’s death was doubly painful for him since the victim was his former student at the University of the Cordilleras (UC) law school. Angadol graduated law in 1997. 

Comelec-CAR Regional Director Armando Velasco noted that Angadol had never mentioned to him any conflict he had been into or any threat to his life during his entire Apayao assignment from 2004 to the present. Comelec-CAR will cooperate closely with police investigators in catching the killers, he added.

Angadol had been detailed at the Comelec office in Tuguegarao, Cagayan before he was promoted and deployed to Apayao as Provincial Election Supervisor, Velasco explained in a phone interview with NORDIS.

Velasco said that Angadol’s daily routine was to drive his wife, Elizabeth Balong-angey of Mankayan, Benguet, to her classes as a teacher at the Vargas College in Luna. Northern Dispatch / Posted by Bulatlat

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