The ex-boyfriend of Maria Moynihan, daughter of a late British aristocrat, was killed weeks after she was found dead in the street

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Filipino police say they have shot dead the ex-boyfriend and “person of interest” in the case of Maria Moynihan, the daughter of a late British aristocrat, who was murdered in Manila last month.

Leandro Antonio Kanahashi, a 33-year-old suspected drug dealer, was killed over the weekend after he allegedly shot at officers during a police operation in Quezon City, in the Metro Manila area.

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Local police district chief Snr Supt Guillermo Eleazar was quoted by local media as saying Kanahashi was one of the last people Moynihan sent a text message to before she was killed, shot five times by unidentified attackers.

He named Kanahashi as a “higher than street-level” drug dealer and said that Moynihan’s family confirmed the pair had been in a relationship.

Police said the handgun used to kill Moynihan was the same type used by Kanahashi, although ballistic tests have not been released, the Philippine Star reported.

Moynihan, 45, was the daughter of the 3rd Lord Moynihan, a British peer who fled to the Philippines in the late 1960s following fraud allegations and became involved in the drugs trade.

A dual British-Filipino citizen, she was also accused of involvement in narcotics and had been on bail following charges of possession of illegal drugs in 2013.

Her body was left in the street in Manila on 10 September, police said, and her attackers propped up a cardboard sign against her corpse which said: “Drug pusher to the celebrities.”

Both Moynihan and Kanahashi are victims of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs, in which police and vigilante groups have killed more than 3,800 people since he took office on June 30.

Around 1,500 of those died in police operations, like Kanahashi, but most killings were carried out by armed groups who Duterte has, at times, publicly encouraged.

Although Kanahashi was a “person of interest” in the case, the sting was focused on his alleged drug deals not Moynihan’s killing, police said. A cohort of Kanahashi was also killed in the shootout and a police officer was hit in the left hand.