A former campaign official of ex-Calapan City Vice Mayor Robert Paras died Saturday afternoon while being treated for multiple stab wounds at the provincial hospital, his friends told The Mindoro Post.
Ricardo “Cado” Batas, a resident of Barangay Ibaba in Calapan City, died from eight stab wounds, his friends, who refused to be named, said.
Sources said a knife-wielding man attacked Batas in an apparent fit of jealousy over a woman.
The suspect, also a resident of Ibaba, fled after the attack, witnesses said.
Batas was a student activist in the Divine Word College of Calapan at the height of the anti-dictatorship movement in the 1980s.
He later joined community organizing work, serving farmers and other marginalized sectors of Oriental Mindoro.
In the last May election, Batas served as a political officer of Paras’ mayoral campaign.
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