Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Un­armed po­lice ran for cov­er yes­ter­day as a killer, dis­guised as a con­struc­tion work­er, gunned downed mur­der ac­cused Pe­ter Gar­cia on the com­pound of the Rio Claro Mag­is­trates' Court. The shoot­ing cre­at­ed pan­ic in the rur­al town, caus­ing the clo­sure of the near­by Re­pub­lic Bank and the court. Last night, of­fi­cers were search­ing for two sus­pects, one of whom was seen lim­ing out­side the court, short­ly be­fore Gar­cia's killing. Po­lice said Gar­cia ap­peared at the Rio Claro court around 10 am. He was re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody and or­dered to reap­pear on Oc­to­ber 29. Around 10.30 am, as he left court with po­lice of­fi­cers, the gun­man struck, shoot­ing Gar­cia at point-blank range, with an au­to­mat­ic firearm, po­lice said. A wit­ness said the law­men, who were sup­posed to pro­tect Gar­cia, fled up­on hear­ing the first shots.

This gave the sec­ond gun­man am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ty to walk up to a bleed­ing Gar­cia and fire three more shots to his head and chest. The as­sailants then jumped over a fence at the side of the court and fled in­to a wait­ing gold Nis­san Almera. The shoot­ing trig­gered pan­ic in the cour­t­house. One wit­ness, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said a pre­sid­ing mag­is­trate fled in­to her pri­vate cham­bers. Ten cas­es were sched­uled to be heard in court. "The court­room had about 30 peo­ple and when the gun­shots were heard, peo­ple start­ed to run," the wit­ness said. He said he and sev­er­al oth­ers be­gan ly­ing face down on the floor. "We didn't know if the gun­man was com­ing in­side. We stayed on the ground for a few min­utes and then some­one walked in and said a man just shoot and kill Pe­ter Gar­cia," he added. Mean­while, at the near­by Re­pub­lic Bank, se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel hur­ried­ly closed the doors.

A bank of­fi­cial said sev­er­al peo­ple pound­ed on the glass doors up­on see­ing the killers flee­ing. By the time Rio Claro Po­lice re­alised what had hap­pened, the gun­men were gone. Dozens of po­lice cor­doned off the area and set up road­blocks along the Na­pari­ma/Ma­yaro Road. Teams al­so were dis­patched in­to the near­by forests while a po­lice he­li­copter made sweeps over­head. How­ev­er, no one was ar­rest­ed. The killing brought out­rage from Rio Claro vil­lagers who chas­tised the po­lice for al­low­ing Gar­cia to be killed. "This man came to the po­lice for pro­tec­tion and so he dead!" one man shout­ed. Ca­lyp­son­ian Mighty Ma­to start­ed singing: "How many more must die." Gar­cia's 70-year-old fa­ther, Har­vey Hug­gins, said he was dis­ap­point­ed that Gar­cia was killed in po­lice cus­tody. He said se­nior law­men were dis­cour­te­ous to him and nev­er al­lowed him to see his son. Wip­ing away tears, Hug­gins said: "They ac­cuse my son of killing his broth­ers and burn­ing his moth­er's house, but this was not so. Why would he do this?"

More on Gar­cia:

?Gar­cia was ac­cused of killing two of his old­er broth­ers (Ja­son, 37, and Ger­ard, 41), Cur­tis Roy, 37, Sim­boonath Ku­mar, 51, Wayne Patrick Gon­za­les, 45. Gar­cia was a sus­pect in the ar­son at­tack on his moth­er Elaine's home on April 20 and was charged with wound­ing Sher­win Wil­son with in­tent to mur­der.

He sur­ren­dered to po­lice May 12, 2009.