Police officials to meet today on Castillejos ambush

Police officials will meet today to compare evidence in their probe on the ambush of Batanes Gov. Telesforo Castillejos in Pasay City last week.

The Task Force Castillejos of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) and their counterparts from the Southern Police District and the Pasay City and Paranaque City police forces will update themselves with evidence they gathered with regard to Castillejos’ ambush.

“We will have a case conference where each side will present evidence they gathered in the ambush of Castillejos and his driver,” said Senior Superintendent Ericson Velasquez, chief of the CIDG National Capital Region (NCR).

According to Velasquez, the meeting will be held at the office of SPD director Chief Superintendent Luizo Ticman in Fort Bonifacio.

Velasquez also serves as lead investigator in the Task Force Castillejos created last week by CIDG director Chief Superintendent Raul Castañeda to probe the incident.

Castañeda named Senior Superintendent Benito Estipona, CIDG deputy chief for operations as head of the task force, which will also include officials from the Police Regional Office 2 (PRO2), who has jurisdiction over Batanes island.

“We decided to include PRO2 investigators who were tasked to dig deeper into the political situation in Batanes since politics was strongly suggested as the motive behind the ambush,” said Castañeda in an interview.

According to Velasquez, the two surveillance cameras they gathered failed to catch the ambush on tape.

“We viewed the two surveillance cameras but it failed to catch the ambush on tape,” said Velasquez.

However, Velasquez pointed out that they are hoping to land a witness, a certain Taba, who claimed he knew something about the ambush of Castillejos and his driver, Albert Patimo.

Meanwhile, Castaneda clarified that there is no deadline for Task Force Castillejos to crack the case.

“The investigation of the ambush would be a very tedious process. There’s no need to issue deadlines because it would only put pressure on the shoulders of our investigators,” said Castañeda.   – Non Alquitran