On July 2, 2018, Antonio Halili, the mayor of Tanauan, Batangas in the Philippines, was shot by an unknown shooter during a flag ceremony at the city hall.

[1] Several angles were investigated as possible motives, including Halili's controversial campaign against drugs during his tenure as mayor of the city, though there were no suspects publicly named or apprehended.

The politician strongly denied the claim, and said that he would resign and have himself publicly paraded as a drug suspect if the police were able to come up with evidence to support the allegation.

[3] On July 2, 2018, Antonio Halili was attending a flag ceremony together with vice mayor Jhoanna Villamor and around 300 local government employees as well as the newly elected barangay officials of the city.

During the singing of the national anthem, near the end of the song, a single shot, initially reported by various news outlets as coming from a sniper, was fired and heard across the scene, as panic quickly ensued.

[8] On August 22, CCTV footage was revealed showing a white car owned by a suspected gunman parks near the gasoline station – about 1 kilometer away from the incident – dated July 2.

[9] At a hearing by the House of Representatives of the Philippines on extrajudicial killings during the Drug War on October 11, 2024, former senior PNP official Royina Garma accused a then-police major of "boasting" about his role in Halili's assassination.

[8] On April 3, 2019, at least 19 armed men disguised as police abducted two of Halili's aides, Allan Fajardo and Ricky Atienza, at the hotel in Santa Rosa, Laguna.