Supreme Court spares ‘killer’ of 13 PNP recruits from death

BAGUIO CITY — The Supreme Court spared a truck driver from the death penalty, and reduced his sentence to four to 10 years for the deaths of 13 police recruits and injuries of 21 other trainees in a road mishap in Cagayan de Oro City in 1995.

The High Court, in a decision penned by Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr., said it is convinced that "the incident, tragic though it was in the light of the persons killed and seriously injured, was an accident and not an intentional felony."

The High Court noted that there was no evidence that truck driver Glenn de los Santos "had an axe to grind against the police trainees that would drive him into deliberately hitting them with intent to kill."

De los Santos was cruising Maitum Highway past midnight of Oct. 5, 1995 on his way to fetch a band taking part in Camiguin’s Lanzones Festival when the accident occurred.

His truck mowed down the police trainees who were jogging along the highway as part of an "endurance run," killing 13 and injuring 21 others, 11 of them seriously.

The Cagayan de Oro court, in its Aug. 26, 1997 decision, sentenced De los Santos to death for the "complex crime of multiple murder, multiple frustrated murder and multiple attempted murder, with the use of a motor vehicle as a qualifying circumstance."

But the High Court found him guilty of the "complex crime of reckless imprudence resulting in multiple homicide with serious physical injuries and less serious injuries."

The High Court said the prosecutors failed to rebut De los Santos’ testimony that "he had been momentarily blinded by the very bright and glaring lights of the oncoming vehicle."

"He must have been reeling from the blinding effect of the lights coming from the other vehicle when he plowed into the group of police trainees," the tribunal said.