Son, stepbrod eyed in San Juan judge's slay

A teenage son and a stepbrother of a slain trial court judge are under investigation for their possible involvement in the crime, the police said yesterday.

Superintendent Franklin Moises Mabanag, chief of the Quezon City Police District-Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit (QCPD-CIDU), has ordered the 18-year-old son of San Juan Metropolitan Trial Court Judge Philip Labastida and stepbrother, Ferdinand Labastida, undergo drug tests.

The police will also investigate two welders working with the stepbrother to build a boat for the victim at the ground level of the three-storey house in Barangay Balonbato in Quezon City.

“They are being investigated because the son is the one living with the victim in the house while the stepbrother has access to the residence,” Superintendent Marcelino Pedrozo Jr., chief of the Homicide Investigation Section of the QCPD-CIDU, said yesterday. “We are looking into a possible inside job.”

Labastida’s daughter found his dead body with several stab wounds in his room on Sunday morning.

According to Pedrozo, Labastida had stopped sending the boy to school and giving him an allowance after reprimanding the boy for his habit of going to computer shops late at night.

Pedrozo said the boy claimed that on the night before his father was found dead, he was playing video games at different computer shops from 8 p.m. on Saturday to 7 a.m. on Sunday.

 “We find his alibi a bit unbelievable,” Pedrozo said.    – Reinir Padua