The latest victim in the war on drugs? A 23-year-old with a learning disability from Quezon City.
According to a report by local news website Interaksyon, Junjun Gadia was shot early morning on Tuesday while hanging out at a tricycle terminal in his neighborhood.
His mother said that she suspects her son was duped into getting involved in drug transactions by neighborhood drug dealers.
The mother described him as “gullible” and “special.”
“Because Junjun is really a special child … my hunch is he had been asked to do things he did not know would endanger him,” she said.
After President Rodrigo Duterte won the presidential elections last year, he promised to wage a “brutal” war on drugs. Police have confirmed that more than 3,400 people have been killed in anti-drug operations.
Over 2,000 other people have been killed in drug-related crimes and thousands more murdered in unexplained circumstances, according to police data.
