By Dominique Gabriel G. Bañaga

Bacolod City Police Office (BCPO) director, Police Colonel Henry Biñas, yesterday confirmed the ‘persons of interest’ in the murder of Ricky Serenio, who formerly served as a bagman for the Berya drug group, have been discharged from the hospital and released from police custody.
According to Biñas, the two individuals, identified as Allan Bustamante and Jomar Dumip-ig, were downgraded from suspects to persons of interest as they are still collecting evidence which could link them from the murder.
The BCPO director said paraffin tests on both suspects and Serenio’s remains came out negative as investigators are still trying to find witnesses who could definitively point to Bustamante and Dumip-ig as the suspects.
Police are also trying to identify the person who boarded Serenio’s car as the individual reportedly fled following the shooting.
Since no charges have been filed against the two, they were free to go.
However, Biñas said the individuals in question have since requested for protection from Police Regional Office-6 (PRO-6) and said, based on observations by the cops assigned to guard them while they were under hospital arrest, they noticed several “suspicious” individuals walking around the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital.
The two have since been placed under close monitoring by police while awaiting the request with PRO-6.
Last Saturday, Serenio was gunned down by three riding-in-tandem suspects near the Manville Royale Subdivision in Barangay Pahanocoy.
Following the shooting, Bustamante and Dumip-ig were arrested by patrolling police officers, who happened to pass by the area as the incident unfolded.
Police are presently looking into illegal drugs as the motive behind Serenio’s murder.
Serenio became controversial after he linked several high-ranking police officers in Negros Occidental and politicians from the Western Visayas to the illegal drug trade./DGB, WDJ