Gapan City mayor linked to murder cases; charges belied

Gapan City Mayor Ernesto Natividad has been implicated by two witnesses in the killing of five people in a cockpit in March 2006 attack.

The witnesses went to the National Bureau of Investigation and reportedly identified him as among the masterminds in the attack.

Natividad called the charges as baseless and pure lies, and said he is ready to face them with a clean conscience.

Pedro Roque, chief of the NBI field office in Nueva Ecija, refused to comment, saying that the witnesses, Virgilio Malgapo and Conrado Ortiz, were under the custody of the agency’s main office in Manila.

The witnesses alleged that Natividad was behind the attack in the cockpit arena in Barangay Pambuan in Gapan City owned by a businessman Boy Pascual on March 20, 2006.
Pascual’s two sons, Ericson and Evertson, along with three security guards identified as Juanito Reyes, Jessie Pablo and Carino Caring, were gunned down in the incident.

Pascual, who is reportedly out to challenge Natividad for the mayoralty post, survived the raid because he was in a closed room at the time.