State Prosecutors Rule Out “Wrongly” Tagged Young Businessman From Espino Ambush
DAGUPAN CITY (February 5, 2020) – State prosecutors finally ruled out the role of young businessman Jewel Castro, tagged by police investigators as owner of one of the vehicles used by gunmen in the September 11, 2019 ambush of former Pangasinan governor Amado Espino Jr.
DOJ panel of prosecutors chaired by San Carlos Deputy City Prosecutor Mitchel Go with members –Assistant City Prosecutors Dennis Anthony Fito and Rohail Castro ruled that 24-year old Baguio-born Castro could not be indicted from the Espino ambuscade that killed two of the former governor’s security aides and injured the former official.
Police found high-powered guns in a Hyundai Elantra recovered in San Carlos City and the Ford Everest found in Malasiqui town, a day after Espino’s convoy was waylaid by gunmen killing the former Governor and lawmaker’s driver and another bodyguard.
The police-instituted “Regional Special Investigating Task Group Espino (SITG Espino)” claimed to have traced Castro at the end of a buy-sell transaction of the Hyundai Elantra car after a certain Marivic Villanueva, its registered owner, sold it to a certain Michael Padayao on November 24, 2017 then sold again to a certain Pediraldo Ras Luciñera, then to him.
The DOJ panel of prosecutors in their resolution dated January 3, 2020 found that Castro “could not be implicated either as principal, accomplice or even an accessory because “he never had physical possession of the red Hyundai Elantra car” giving him credence above Lucinera’s claims, described by the fiscals as “vague” and whose allegations were “peppered with inconsistencies”.
Instead, the fiscals indicted Lucinera for obstruction of justice for giving false or fabricated information to mislead authorities from getting into the bottom of the Espino ambush.
Castro earlier obtained a certification from the Land Transportation Office’s (LTO) Management Information Division that he never had any Hyundai vehicle via Farramilah Mangadang-Gumar, officer-incharge of the Records Section of the LTO’s Management Information Division in East Avenue, Quezon City that said, “upon verification from the LTO-IT database, no record of Hyundai vehicle (was registed) to (Castro’s) name.”
Jubilant, Castro heaved a sigh of relief with the ruling of the panel of prosecutors while bewailing how “erroneous, misleading, irresponsible and reckless” reports linking him that “besmirched his reputation and jeopardized his sense of security” for becoming “unjustly dragged into the crime.” “This is a victory of justice for me,” the young businessman said.
Deputy Prosecutor Go and his panel of prosecutors however recommended the filing of double murder charges and two more attempted murder against Albert Palisoc and Benjie Resultan, whose were positively identified via CCTV footage’s near the ambush site and gathered from a bus the two rode after the ambuscade; John Paul Regalado, the owner of the Ford Everest get-away vehicle after he never refuted he owned the said vehicle and that “he furnished the means through which the crimes were carried out”; and four more John Does as co-conspirators.
Police earlier tagged 22 suspects and declared the case as “solved”.
Artemio A. Dumlao with Eva Visperas/ABN
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