Virgilio Divinagracia was accused of murder before the Court of First Instance of  Iloilo and having been  found guilty  was  sentenced to suffer reclusion perpetua, with the accessory penalties of the law, to  indemnify the heirs of the  deceased in  the amount of P4,000, and to pay the costs.  He appealed from this decision.

In the  evening of  December 5, 1953,  at about 7:00 o'clock, Ernesto Cartel went  to  buy bread in a  store situated in barrio Malitbog,  municipality of Calinog,  province of Iloilo, which was  ten meters away from his house.  On his  way  home,  he met Virgilio  Divinagracia who was then armed with a carbine and was accompanied by a man  whom Cartel did not recognize.   When  Cartel arrived in his house, he gave the bread to his child and went to the balcony  from  where he  saw  Divinagracia going  up  the  neighboring house of Marina Gicole.  Not long thereafter,  Cartel  saw  Divinagracia  and his companion go  to one side of Gicole's house and after a while he  also  saw  Santos  Combong,  a municipal  policeman, walking on the  road in front of the same house.  While Santos Combong  was exactly in front  of  the  house, Divinagracia,  who was hiding behind a  fence,  fired  at Santos, who, after being hit, fell to the ground.  He died instantly.  Soon thereafter, Divinagracia and his companion ran away passing by the house of Leonardo Caro situated nearby.

At this  juncture,  Cartel, who saw the firing from  the balcony of his house, betook himself to the house of Caro to  inquire if  he heard the firing of the shot and Caro answered in  the  affirmative.  Caro  further  stated  that Divinagracia and his companion passed by his house in a hurry.  Because at that time armed men known as dissidents were roaming the vicinity threatening and terrorizing the residents,  Cartel and  Caro, out of fear, refrained from reporting to the authorities the bloody  incident.

The next morning, Domingo Cachuela, a local policeman, went to the place  to  investigate  the shooting  of  Santos Combong.  He found his dead body sprawled  on the road about ten meters distant from the house of Marina Gicole. He also found an empty carbine  shell somewhere  on the ground.  He  and  Justino  Lanaria, a  sanitary inspector who accompanied  the policeman, examined the body of the victim and found  that it had  one bullet wound on the breast which ran  through his body and came out at the back.  After  being satisfied  that Combong died as a result of the wound, they asked the family of the deceased to take the body to their house and give it burial.  Cachuela investigated  Marina Gicole  and  Leonardo Caro but because  they  were then  under the influence of  fear  they professed ignorance of how the shooting took place.   Cachuela nonetheless  made a sketch of his findings indicating therein the position of  the  body of  the  victim in relation to the road and the ^houses of Gicole, Cartel and Combong.

The police force of Calinog continued to investigate the death  of Combong but the people in the vicinity refused to give any further information about his death.  Sometime  in May, 1955, however, Divinagracia was arrested and confined in jail for robbery in band committed in the nearby province  of Capiz.   When  Ernesto  Cartel and Leonardo Caro learned that Divinagracia was confined in jail in Capiz, they gathered courage and  revealed for the first time  to the  chief of  police of  Calinog what  they knew of the shooting of the  deceased.  Their statements were taken down in writing which culminated in the arrest and prosecution of  Divinagracia.

The accused set up  an alibi.  He claims that in  May,. 1952, he left barrio Malitbog and transferred his residence to Bacolod  City where he engaged  in  the  occupation ol selling fish; that in December,  1953, when the shooting occurred,  he was in said city living in the house of one Casiano Geron; that in  May, 1954, he  left Bacolod City and went to live again in  Calinog;  that sometime in 1955 he was accused of  robbery in band  in the Court of First Instance of Capiz, and as  a consequence he was lodged in jail  in Capiz; that on  May  14,  1955, he was released from jail and returned  to barrio Malitbog which. was the natal place of  his wife; that he  did  not know that Combong had died and it was only on June 8, 1955  when he  was arrested that he came to  know of his death.

There is enough evidence to show  that Santos Combong died  as a result of a bullet  wound he sustained in the evening of December 5, 1953  caused by a shot fired at him by  appellant.  The shooting  was witnessed by Ernesto Cartel who actually saw from his balcony how  appellant,. who  was  then hiding  behind  a  fence, fired at his  victim with a carbine and who thereafter ran away, accompanied by  a companion whom Cartel did not  recognize, passing by  the house of Leonardo Caro.  Cartel could not have been mistaken in his  identification  of  appellant because he  met the latter a moment  before and  even  asked him where he was going.   While  Caro did not actually witness the shooting, he however heard the firing  of a shot and immediately thereafter saw appellant passed by his  house in  a hurry.  The testimony of Caro can therefore be considered as corroborative of that of Cartel.  The evidence also  shows that  Cartel  had  known  appellant for a long time previous to the  incident since during the Japanese occupation both had resided in barrio Malitbog.  The testimony of  Cartel  finds  further corroboration ten meters away from that of Marina Gicole in front of  which the shooting  occured and  there  was  nothing that  could obstruct his view from the balcony of his  house to the place where the  accused  fired the  shot.  Caro, on the other hand,  testified that minutes  before he heard the firing of  a carbine,  he saw  appellant, his face covered by a handkerchief, carrying  a carbine, and  immediately thereafter,  appellant and his companion ran away and passed near his  house.   It is true that Cartel  and Caro  were nephews of the victim,  but such relationship  alone cannot discredit  their testimony if they are  otherwise  credible, and here the  lower court  found them to be worthy of credence.

The rule  is well-settled  that an  alibi  cannot prosper unless clear and satisfactory  evidence is presented that the accused was present at some other place at  the time the crime  was allegedly committed and  that from that place it was physically  impossible for him to  have been at the place where the crime was committed either before or  after the time he was at such other place  (U. S. vs. Oxiles, 29  Phil., 587; People vs. Palamos, 49 Phil., 601). Much less  can  it prevail  when there is clear  evidence regarding the identification of the  accused.   (People vs. Masani,  G. R.  No.  L-3973,  Sept.  18, 1952; People  vs. Binsol, 100 Phil., 713; People vs. Umali, G. R.  Nos. L-886670, January 23, 1957; People vs. Villaroya, 101 Phil., 1061; People V8> Alcaraz, 103 Phil., 533.)   As already said, there is  enough  evidence identifying appellant  as  the one who feed the shot that snuffed out the life of the deceased.

We wish to commend the  efforts made by counsel de oficio in pointing out flaws in the evidence for the prosecution in an effort to get appellant's acquittal,  but such efforts notwithstanding, we  are persuaded  to affirm his conviction  because  the laws,  if any,  are not convincing enough  to  justify a contrary  conclusion.  Thus,  his claim that the witnessess for the prosecution, Cartel and Caro, should not be given credence because they waited for about one year and a half to report to the authorities what they allegedly know of the  shooting,  appears sufficiently explained in the brief  of  the Solicitor General.  We quote: "Cartel and Caro, however, successfully explained the reason of their silence for  more than  a  year.  According to them, they did not reveal earlier than May, 1955, the identity of the appellant as the murderer, because at the time that Combong was murdered, the  appellant and his companions used to  roam around the barrios; and  with impunity, terrorized the residents  of  the  barrios  who cowered with fear * *  *.  The temerity with which  appellant and his companions committed crimes here and there is demonstrated by the fact that even the deceased, Santos Combong, who was then a town policeman, was killed by appellant and his companions * *  *.  If a then policeman could  be killed by  these  dissidents, a few  meters  away from  the house of the policeman  * * *,  it is not hard to imagined  the amount  of fear that Ernesto Cartel and Leonardo Caro, both of whom were simple-minded  residents of the barrio, had entertained towards the appellant who in open  defiance  with the  law, had been carrying a carbine  around the  barrio."   (See People vs.  Umali, G. R. Nos. L-8866-70, January  23,  1957).

We  take  note of counsel de oficio's claim that there is no proof of the motive that may have impelled appellant to commit the crime, but such proof is  not indispensable if his guilt or participation is otherwise established by sufficient  evidence as in this  case.  (U. S. vs.  Mc Mann) 4 Phil., 561; U. S. vs. Carlos,  15  Phil., 47;  People vs. Javier, G. R. No. L-7841, Dec. 14,  1956; People vs. Bugagao, G. R. No. L-11328, April 16, 1958).

The decision appealed  from being in accordance  with law and the evidence,  the same  is hereby affirmed, with costs  against appellant.

Paras C. J., Bengzon,  Padilla,  Montemayor, Reyes A,, Labrador, Concepcion, and Endencia, JJ., concur.