Robbers loot Quezon City judge’s sala

Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 95 Judge Diosdado Peralta fumed yesterday when he learned that his sala had been looted by unidentified men who took away vital pieces of evidence in several cases.

The police could not say how many persons took part in the robbery but investigators have lifted sets of fingerprints from a metal cabinet where the stolen evidence had been stored.

Branch clerk of court, lawyer Ruth Ferrera said the thieves got away with seven guns – two caliber .45 pistols, a caliber .25 pistol, a caliber 3.8 revolver, a 9 mm pistol and a 5.56 mm HK automatic rifle – and some 1.2 kilos of methamphetamine hydrochloride or shabu in two plastic bags.

One of the stolen caliber .45 pistols was the gun used in the controversial Joro-Joro case involving a traffic policeman who shot dead an 11-year-old boy. The judge convicted the traffic officer, Ferdinand Pallorina, of the charge and sentenced him to death. It is up for automatic review before the Supreme Court.

The 5.56 mm automatic rifle, meanwhile, is part of the evidence seized from the house of suspected drug lord Alfredo Tiongco, whom the judge earlier acquitted of drug charges.

Peralta also acquitted Tiongco of an illegal possession of firearms charge, noting he was not present when the police raided his residence in Talayan Village, Quezon City. What got the goat of the 48-year-old judge is that the building’s security guards even noticed that the lightbulbs was still on in his office shortly before midnight Wednesday but did not do anything beyond knocking at the door.

"How can they expected to receive an answer to their knocks from thieves?" he said, adding that the guards should have considered it unusual that at such an unholy hour, someone was still working at the office.

Investigators said the robbers broke into the judge’s office by destroying the door lock. They used a metal bar to destroy the cabinet’s vertical steel rod lock. The evidence cabinet sat behind the desk of branch clerk of court, Ruth Ferrera.

Peralta said some of the lost shabu had been presented as evidence in a drug trafficking case involving a certain Lino Ratonal, which is due for promulgation on Oct. 30.

The rest of the shabu belonged to a drug case involving a suspect identified as Luvinia Santos. He said the litigation of the Santos case was almost over.

"I don’t think the loss of the evidence in the drug cases will affect the outcome (of the litigation)," he said. He had just finished trying the controversial graft and bribery case involving dismissed Anonas police chief, Francisco Ovilla and 11 of his men.

"There is a clear breach of security here," said the clerk of court. "Security has been lax." The judge said, noting that the burglars had one thing in mind: to loot the evidence cabinet. "They did not touch anything else here but that cabinet."