Another cocaine bust in Cebu City

CEBU, Philippines - The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA)-7 scored another cocaine bust yesterday at shortly past midnight along V. Rama Avenue.

Arrested was an electronic shop technician, who yielded an estimated P400,000 worth of cocaine. He was collared in a buy-bust operation.

The arrest of Eugenio Opura Lastimosa, Jr., 47, was the second that the authorities in Central Visayas made barely a week after arresting a tricycle driver from Tubigon, Bohol for selling P720,000 worth of cocaine.

Seized from Lastimosa were seven packs of cocaine weighing a total of 70 grams with actual market value of more or less P400,000.

PDEA-7 Regional Director Randy Pedroso said the buy-bust was arranged after weeks of surveillance on the suspect, who is a resident of A. Lopez Street, but works in an electronic shop along V. Rama Ave.

Pedroso said that the suspect used to be an errand boy of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group-CIDG-7.

During the buy-bust, Lastimosa allegedly handed over a medium-pack of cocaine weighing two to three grams to a poseur-buyer who used five marked fake P1,000 bills.

Upon Lastimosa’s arrest, six other big packs of cocaine were found in his possession.

A charge for selling illegal drugs will be filed against him.

Pedroso said they will be looking into Lastimosa’s link in Eastern Samar, because based on the intelligence information they have gathered, the suspect has a source in the said province.

He said the police will still be conducting more operations against cocaine because several bricks of cocaine were dropped off in the seawaters of Eastern Samar last December by an unidentified vessel and are now being delivered in Cebu.

Lastimosa, in an interview with reporters yesterday, admitted that he worked as a maintenance employee in CIDG-7, but stopped when he was hired as a technician in an electronic shop in V. Rama Ave.

He said poverty pushed him to do illegal drug trade. He however declined to reveal where he got the illegal drugs.

He said he also has to continue support his four children all attending school.

Last week, PDEA-7 and a team from the Regional Police Office-7, arrested Vedasto Corsiga, Sr. during a buy-bust operation in a fast food outlet in barangay Capitol Site.

Twelve sachets of cocaine were seized from him.

Corsiga said he was forced to do the illegal activity to raise money to look for the man who killed his son in Cebu on September last year. —/NLQ (THE FREEMAN)