Bomb scare jolts Caloocan justice hall

MANILA, Philippines - Court hearings at the Caloocan City Hall of Justice were called off yesterday morning after an anonymous caller said the building would be bombed.

City police chief Senior Superintendent Jude Santos said at around 8:10 a.m., its telephone operator received a call from a man lambasting a city prosecutor for allegedly letting a police officer get killed after attending a hearing at his office.

“The caller reportedly criticized the local justice system for the recent death of a police officer who was gunned down after attending a hearing at the judicial complex. He told the telephone operator that he would blow up the building,” Santos told The STAR.

The building’s security officer, Napoleon Saccuan, coordinated with the local police.

A bomb squad, led by Senior Police Officer 3 Erwin Carandang, used a bomb-sniffing dog to conduct a search after evacuating the building. At around noon, almost four hours after the threat was made, the bomb squad said there were no bombs in the justice hall and allowed the employees to resume their work.

A number of police officers were deployed in and around the building to assist regular security guards.

Chief Inspector Rodrigo Soriano, Caloocan police investigation chief, said the bomb threat could be connected to the March 23 murder of Senior Police Officer 1 Manolo Caoili, a member of the Highway Patrol Group, near the justice hall.

Soriano said no other police officer was killed in the area recently.

Caoili was driving his car (WHA-114) after attending a frustrated murder case hearing as a witness at the office of fiscal Darwin Canete when he was shot dead along 10th Avenue en route to the Caloocan City Hall.

Soriano said with Caoili’s death, only his widow is left to fight a court battle with her relatives over a property in Tondo, Manila.