Survival mode

THE ULTIMATE survivor. That can only be Richard Douglas Agnew.

Twenty seven bullets pockmarking the red Ford Expedition he was driving, not one stray hitting  him, not even grazing any part of him. The scratch on his forehead coming from a shard of the blasted window or the windshield. 

Maybe, this former Royal Ulster Constable had an amulet stronger than that of the legendary Nardong Putik. Else, his surviving that Saturday ambush could only be deemed an act of God. Damn ye who cry “Ambush me!”

Yeah, God’s intervening mercy and saving grace reach out even to public sinners like Agnew.

“This is the sleazy Irish businessman who wants to be King of Sin City. Ex-cop Richard Agnew is heading up an organisation of bar owners on the world's seediest red-light strip.

Our pictures show the rugby-loving Ulsterman shaming the nation and the Ulster flag by draping it around young girls and making sex workers pose for trophy pictures.”

So it is written in the web page of Sunday World/Real Irish Sunday.

“…a big name in the Angeles City sex trade

…owner of the Blue Nile Bar, Golden Nile, Sunshine, Tropican and several other sex bars in Angeles city - a focal point in the Philippines sex trade.

… arrested in 2004 after the National Bureau of Investigation raided the Blue Nile hotel and bar and allegedly found six girls aged between 11 and 13.”

So the Belfast Telegraph  tagged Agnew in a story in September last year on the killing of Agnew’s fellow RUC and business partner David Balmer and his Filipina live-in partner in the house the three shared in Barangay Amsic.

As Agnew survived his arrest and self-deportation to Thailand in 2004 in the wake of the raid by the National Bureau of Investigation on Agnew’s Blue Nile hotel and bar which yielded six girls aged between 11 and 13, so he survived police questioning on the double murder.

Easier now than to survive a volley of 27 bullets from an M-16 automatic rifle and a .9 millimeter handgun. You just have to give it to Agnew.

You have to give it to 1^st District Rep. Carmelo “Tarzan” Lazatin too, for standing for Agnew. He made it clear as day – the ace Punto reporter Joey Pavia says, and wrote in his story yesterday – that Agnew is a “friend” of the Cong wanting to be mayor again. That is some rare feat, considering Agnew’s media-impacted infamy.  

“The (ambush on Agnew) is terrifying.  First, the businessmen were subjected to  extortion. They were harassed and their businesses were closed. Now these  attempts to kill them,” said Lazatin, warning that the incident “will definitely cripple businesses and tourism in Angeles City.”

“Politics,” cried – expectedly – Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan. Not of the Agnew ambush but of Lazatin’s lament.

“It has all the signs and shades of politics. There is no kotong (extortion) exerted on traders in our city,” said Pamintuan. “In fact, Lazatin himself had been telling people before (he decided to run against me) that I don’t get bribes from investors.”

“Infighting between Caucasian businessmen trying to outdo and dupe each other.” So Pamintuan rooted the perceived motive in Agnew’s ambush and said he would ask both the Bureau of Immigration and the National Bureau of Investigation  to investigate alleged “foreign mafias in tandem with local syndicate groups preying on innocent and would be hapless and helpless foreign investors.”

Out of the pale of politics, into basic sleuthing now: Is there a connection between the Agnew ambush and the double murder of Balmer and his girlfriend last year?

“It’s possible but we do not have hard evidence on that,” Agnew himself said, disclosing that he has been pursuing the case against the suspects there.

“We are evaluating all the information gathered by investigators, we are pursuing all possible leads,” said Chief Inspector Luisito Tan, chief of Station 4, as well he should as a grizzled police investigator.

A cursory read of the articles on the Balmer murder and this Agnew ambush immediately shows one common denominator – the use of a white Toyota Innova.

In the Balmer case, “…a security guard in the subdivision said he saw a white Toyota Innova in the area at around 3:30 a.m… He said he saw a male Caucasian wearing a black cap and a Filipino driver inside the vehicle.”

In the Agnew case, “Police said they were informed by witnesses that a white Toyota Innova with the letter “J” and number “9” on its license plate was noticed rushing off the area after the shooting happened.  

The Innova in the first case was retrieved, its owner traced, and the suspects – who rented the car – were identified but have remained at large.

The Innova in the second case has yet to be found. But the police can take it from there.

Patterns and profiles make the signature modus operandi in the crime business.     

Meanwhile, its business as usual at Agnew’s Fields Avenue domain. Surviving? Hardly. Profiting? Magnificently.