Court clears Sumabong, pal for killing of man in Bogo

CEBU, Philippines - The Regional Trial Court has acquitted two notorious robbery suspects who were charged in the killing of a man in Bogo City in 2005 for lack of evidence.

In acquitting the two suspects, Joel Sumabong and Efren Beladas, RTC Branch 8 Judge Macaundas Hadjirasul said the court finds the prosecution’s evidence on the identity of both the accused as the assailants doubtful. The two suspects were charged for the death of Alberto Tepait in Bogo City last May 2005.

Tepait’s son, Roland, said that they were outside their home when his father was gunned down by two men. He said they were eating mangoes and he left his father outside for a while to get a spoon and fork inside their house when he saw two men shot his father.

Roland said he was about three meters away from the scene of the incident. He later identified Sumabong and Beladas in a rogue gallery shown by the police as the assailants.

But when called to the witness stand, Sumabong said that Bogo had its own vigilantes when the town was under former mayor Celestino “Tining” Martinez III that was allegedly called the “mayor’s squad.”

Sumabong said a certain Boy Tagalog is behind the case, claiming he was privy to the plan to kill Tepait because he was a close-in bodyguard of Martinez, a claim that Martinez has since denied.

Sumabong said he was hired to be an errand boy of the Martinezes in 2001. Part of the job was to gather people for the 2004 elections. He also claimed he was the leader of the mayor’s squad composed of co-accused Beladas, Dindo Ancero, Felix Albores and the group of Boy Tagalog, consisting of four men.

Beladas, Ancero and Sumabong are also facing robbery case in band case for the Land Bank robbery in Bogo.

In May 2005, Sumabong said that a neighbor approached him regarding the problem of Tepait’s wife Imelda, who was allegedly a battered wife.

Sumabong said he advised the neighbor to approach Martinez instead because he could not do anything to help.

Sumabong later learned that Imelda did approach Martinez, who allegedly ordered Tagalog to kill Tepait. It was Sumabong who told Tagalog through a text message that the mayor had an errand for him.

Sumabong described Martinez to be “fascinated” with the vigilantes of Cebu City. “With the many problems in Bogo, he wanted to follow Cebu City,” Sumabong said in Bisaya.

When asked why Tagalog was given the order to shoot Tepait, Sumabong said Martinez believed that he (Sumabong) was too well-known as the mayor’s close-in bodyguard to be involved in a murder. Hadjirasul in his decision said that the accused was not placed in a police line up contrary to the standard stationhouse verification procedures employed to test the memory of the witness.

“An underhand mode of identification somehow undermines the reliability of an accurate identification of an accused, once so described by this court pointedly suggestive, generated confidence, where there was none, activated visual imagination and all told, subverted their reliability as eyewitnesses,” Hadjirasul said.

The court also said that they cannot award civil liability because such doubt goes into the very authorship of the killing of the victim. — Jasmin R. Uy/WAB (THE FREEMAN)