A Teacher Was Shot Multiple Times in Front of Her Students

Elementary school students in the Philippines’ Valencia City, Bukidnon province witnessed a horrific incident on Tuesday when one of their teachers was shot right inside their classroom.

According to a police report, four unidentified armed men onboard two motorcycles entered the Dalit Elementary School and shot Zhydee Cabañelez, 32 years old, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported. They fired multiple times as she was about to start her class at around 8 a.m.

Aside from Zhydee, her husband Ramil Cabañelez, 34 years old, who is also a teacher, and seven students were inside the classroom at the time of the shooting.

“Zhydee was attending to something while Ramil was looking for some files,” Valencia City Police chief Lt. Col. Surki Sereñas told Inquirer.

The gunmen first approached Zhydee and asked where her husband was. They started shooting Ramil after spotting him but he managed to take cover under a table. The assailants then started to shoot at Zhydee, hitting her foot twice and her shoulder, also two times.

When she fell, the suspects exited the classroom.

“They had the opportunity to finish Zhydee off and shoot Ramil, but instead they left,” Sereñas said.

Zhydee, who was a 2017 Outstanding Teacher awardee in her town proper, is now in the hospital and is in stable condition.

The Schools Division Superintendent of Valencia, Dr. Victoria Gazo, has requested the Department of Social Welfare and Development to hold a debriefing session for the students who may have been traumatised after witnessing the shooting.

Dalit Elementary School is a small facility about 20 kilometres (12.4 miles) from the city proper. It can only be accessed by a raft or pump boat from the other side of the Pulangi River. After crossing the river, one still has to walk for 30 minutes to reach the area, which is believed to be infiltrated by the New People's Army (NPA), the armed wing of the communist party in the Philippines.

According to Sereñas, they are verifying reports that Zhydee’s father, identified only as “Zaldy” was a member of the NPA in North Central Mindanao, based in Bukidnon. They are looking into whether this connection is related to the shooting.

Human Rights group Karapatan told reporters, “We believe that this attack is targeted, a calculated maneuver to instill fear as part of a series of attacks on progressive organizations, peasant organizers, indigenous rights defenders, and human rights activists in Mindanao, particularly in Bukidnon.”

Zhydee is a member of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), a left-leaning teachers’ organisation that government officials have accused of being a front for communist rebels.

The teachers’ group has denied these claims and in January, asked the Court of Appeals for protection against the police’s alleged profiling of its members. The request was junked the following month due to procedural “infirmities.”

"It is worth noting that this strike comes at a time when teachers have been growing in strength and uniting en masse for a substantial salary increase," ACT said.

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