Pasil porter gets lighter term for death of fellow worker

A porter at the Pasil Fish Market was sentenced to eight years imprisonment for stabbing to death a fellow laborer on November 1, 2004.

Allan M. Montes, 34, married, of barangay Ermita, got a lighter term because of the prosecution's failure to prove there was treachery and pre-meditation to convict him of murder. Regional Trial Court (RTC) Judge Ireneo Lee Gako Jr. convicted Montes of homicide instead.

Montes claimed that while he was watching over some fish and other marine products owned by a customer, the victim, Warren Baar approached him and asked to have some. Montes said he refused. He said Baar got mad and called him "selfish."

Later, while he was watching friends playing a game of "dama de noche," he said Baar appeared and whipped out a knife and attacked him.

He said he was quick to parry the thrust and in the process disarmed Baar. With the knife in his hand, he said he struck Baar on the back with it.

Montes claimed he killed Baar in self-defense. But Gako said Montes failed to prove the killing was in self-defense.

"The claim of the accused of self-defense has not been sufficiently proved because the settled rule is that, self defense must be proved like proving the crime itself," Gako said in his four-page decision. - Rene U. Borromeo