Arsonist nabbed

Police arrested yesterday one of Valenzuela City’s most notorious criminals, wanted for setting a two-storey house on fire that killed eight persons, including a three-year-old girl, in March last year.

Superintendent Jose Marcelo, Valenzuela police chief, identified the suspect as Rolando Trinidad, 19, reportedly a drug addict, with unknown address in Valenzuela City.

SPO4 Ernesto Castillo, warrant and subpoena section chief, said at about 11:30 a.m. yesterday, they received a tip-off from an informant that fugitive Trinidad was spotted at the second floor of a building along C. Molina Street in Barangay Veinte Reales, Valenzuela City.

Armed with an arrest warrant issued by regional trial court (RTC) Judge Floro Alejo (Branch 172), SPO2 Rodolfo Farinas nabbed Trinidad, No. 7 on the list of the city police’s 10 most wanted persons.

Valenzuela fire marshal Chief Inspector Efren Yadao said Trinidad, allegedly high on shabu, lit a curtain in the house of one Gloria Gibelagen at 57 C. Molina Street, Bartolome Subdivision in Barangay Veinte Reales around 7:30 a.m. on March 4, 2001. The fire soon spread trapping Gibelagen and seven others, all asleep inside the house that fateful Sunday morning. Gloria’s son Zaldy escaped death when he decided to join friends in the neighborhood an hour before tragedy struck.

Those who perished in the two-hour blaze included two of Gibelagen’s teenage daughters, Michelle, 18 and Rochelle, 16; tenant Danny Cubacob, 25, his live-in partner Alma Karen Mendez, 18, their daughter Roma, 3, Alma’s mother Julieta, 25 and another live-in couple identified only as Ryan, 25 and Michelle, 24.

Yadao reported that Trinidad was allegedly a spurned suitor of Michelle. – Jerry Botial