Kent Carpenter, 73, was with his Filipina companion in a house in the coastal town of Sibulan, in Negros Oriental province, on Sunday night when the masked men forced their way in, News.Az reports, citing CBS news.
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One drew a gun and shot Carpenter in the head, killing him instantly, police said his companion told them. The men took a laptop, an unspecified amount of cash and a backpack before fleeing, national police spokesperson Col. Allen Rae Co told reporters.
Regional police spokesperson Lt. Col. Joem Malong told The Associated Press that Carpenter’s companion sustained unspecified injuries and was being treated. Investigators were trying to determine the motive for the killing and identify the attackers.
Carpenter was a marine biologist who had worked as a lecturer at the Silliman University, in Dumaguete city, Negros Oriental, Malong said.
The U.S. Embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We assure the victim’s family, the community and our foreign visitors that this case is being treated with utmost urgency and no effort will be spared until justice is served,” regional police director Brig. Gen. Romano Cardiño said.
The most recent travel advisory from the U.S. State Department says Americans should “exercise increased caution in the Philippines due to crime, terrorism, civil unrest, and kidnapping.
Carpenter had been a biological sciences professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, since 1996. His research — which focused on the Philippines and the Coral Triangle between the Indian and Pacific oceans — shaped conservation efforts around the world, university officials said. Carpenter studied biodiversity in the Philippines’ Verde Island Passage, and he advocated for its designation as a World Heritage Site.
Old Dominion said he was on an extended research assignment in the Philippines and planned to retire in September.
