Last of 3 priest killers arrested

After two years in hiding, the last of three suspects in the Independence Day robbery-slay of a Dominican priest in Navotas has fallen in the hands of authorities .

Chief Superintendent Leopoldo Bataoil, Northern Police District (NPD) director, presented to the media yesterday suspect Joel Malinao, 30, a construction worker and resident of Kaunlaran Village, Dagat-dagatan, Caloocan City.

Eyewitness Roger Regala, the suspect’s neighbor, tagged Malinao as the lookout in the killing of Fr. Romeo Encinas Asuzano of the Order of Preachers (OP), then 48, parish priest of the San Lorenzo Ruiz Parish Church in Navotas at 9:30 p.m. of June 12, 2004.

Malinao’s two companions, his brother Roger, who fatally stabbed the priest, and Ronaldo Francisco, were arrested earlier and are now locked up at the Navotas Municipal Jail.

Asuzano was going back to the parish church on his bicycle when he was waylaid by the suspects on top of the bridge on C-3 Road in North Bay Boulevard South, Navotas.

He refused to let go of the bike and was stabbed dead.

Nobody knew he was killed until parishioners missed him for Sunday Mass the next day.

The Navotas police failed to fully identify Asuzano even as a spot report on the incident was submitted to the NPD.

In his report to Bataoil, Superintendent Reynaldo Orante, District Police Intelligence Unit (DPIU) chief, said Malinao was arrested at his house along C-3 Road in SAWATA, Kaunlaran Village at 9:30 am. yesterday.

Leading the arresting team were SPO4s Antonio Tenorio and Pancho Labrador.

Malinao was arrested by virtue of a warrant for another case of frustrated homicide and robbery issued by Caloocan Judge Ma. Theresa de Guzman-Alvarez the other day.

Complainant Editha Pendulas, 53, turned up at the DPIU and pointed to Malinao as among those who clubbed to death his son Rolando, 30, a former security guard of a garments factory in Tayuman, Manila last Jan. 4, 2005.

Pendulas told The STAR her son’s body was never recovered after the suspects threw it down a manhole, she said. A concrete island was later built over the hole.

She added that Edgar Regala, 30, brother of Roger, the eyewitness in the Asuzano killing, witnessed the attack and told a community leader only last year.

Despite the positive identification by eyewitnesses, Malinao denied the allegations.

"Wala akong alam diyan. Ang pinagnakawan di ko ipapakain sa pamilya ko. Di ko aaminin yan," he said.

Roger, however, insisted that the Malinao brothers, all six or eight of them, are notorious criminals in their neighborhood.

He said residents are scared of them even as four of the siblings roam around freely doing what they want in the neighborhood and getting away with it, their activities getting unreported to authorities for fear of reprisal. The rest are serving terms in jail for different crimes.

Orante said Bataoil has ordered the immediate turnover of Malinao to the court of origin for appropriate disposition. – With Pete Laude