By U.S. News Agency / Asian

Police launched a manhunt against a former teacher suspected to be the mastermind in the murder of a 15-year-old female student of Tagbilaran Grace Christian School (TGCS), who had earlier filed a sexual harassment case against him.

Other subjects of the manhunt are the hired gunman and the driver of the get-away motorcycle whose cartographs were release Saturday by Police provincial director Sr. Supt.Constantino Barot Jr.

The victim, Mezie Rose Onod, a third year high school student of TGCS, fell on the ground after the gunman shot her at a close range in broad daylight near the Tagbilaran City Airport on Nov. 23.

Based on initial investigation, an unidentified man approached the victim from behind and asked if she was Mezie Rose and instantly pulled the trigger right after the victim confirmed that she was.

The bullet went through her body and she was already dead when rushed to the hospital.

The suspected mastermind, a mentor in one of the universities here, is also facing charges of sexual harassment filed by other victims, aside from Onod.

Barely three days before her murder, Onod’s family had her case reopened.

Bystanders at the crime scene vividly described the unidentified gunman and his accomplice waiting nearby on the getaway motorcycle.

Reports reaching the city police had it that the victim’s former teacher was seen at the vicinity of the crime scene that day.

The teacher referred to was the same person whom the victim had earlier complained of having harassed her when she was still studying at the Holy Infant King Academy in the town of Cortes.

The sexual harassment complaint was reportedly the reason for her transfer to TGCS this school year.

Based on this report, authorities checked on who was the victim’s former mentor. But they found out that he no longer lives in Cortes town. An informant revealed that the teacher transferred teaching to the Bohol Island State University.

Reports said it was the first time that the bystanders saw the gunman, but the driver of the getaway vehicle was familiar to them.

Witnesses described the getaway motorcycle as “kalansay” in vernacular or skeleton — the term coined to refer to motorcycles stripped of some accessories, and it looked like it was just a re-assembled unit.

There were also reports that upon learning of her plan to transfer, the principal of Holy Infant King Academy in Cortes (where the victim used to study) allegedly wrote a letter to the administrators of TGCS, warning not to accept the victim on grounds of dishonesty by falsely accusing a teacher of malicious acts.

The administrators of Grace Christian School, however, did not heed.

Indeed, Robert Rio, principal of Grace Christian School recalled that at the start of the school year they had received malicious warnings not to accept Onod.

Rio and the entire Tagbilaran Grace Christian School community placed an ad in local newspapers demanding justice and condemning “in strongest terms the brutal and wanton killing of our 15-year-old 3rd year student”.