Gold bar heist suspect a fall guy, kin claim

BAGUIO CITY — A fall guy?

Relatives of Joseph Coop, 35, whom the police have tagged as one of the seven men involved in the P14-million gold bar heist at the Lepanto Consolidated Mining Corp. last Sept. 20, have raised this question.

Coop’s cousin Ignacio Dominguez claimed yesterday that barangay officials and villagers of Tadian, Mt. Province could prove that Coop was not involved in the robbery that left a Lepanto engineer and four security personnel dead.

Dominguez said Coop was in Tadian when the incident happened. Besides, he said his cousin could not have taken part in the heist because of a physical disability.

Coop, he said, limps on his right leg due to a gunshot wound inflicted on him allegedly by a police officer of Mankayan, Benguet almost a year ago.

Curiously, Coop’s pronounced limp was what reportedly gave him away as a suspect. Police arrested him based on witnesses’ accounts that one of the seven robbers limped.

Human rights lawyer Randy Kinaud, speaking on behalf of the Cordillera Human Rights Organization, also suspects that Coop might be a fall guy.

Dominguez quoted Coop as alleging that he was tortured inside a detention cell at Camp Molintas in Bangao, Buguais, Benguet for two days and two nights after his arrest on Sept. 29.

Police nabbed Coop in his house in Colalo, Mankayan, Benguet by virtue of an arrest warrant.

Coop’s wife Marjorie said her husband arrived in Colalo from Tadian several days after the Lepanto heist, purportedly to visit their sick daughter.

Two days after the heist, lawmen pursuing the robbers gunned down a 21-year-old deaf-mute, Efren Agsayang, while he was hunting for birds.

Gener Lacbongan, one of Agsayang’s two companions in the bird-hunting, said the policemen apparently mistook them for communist rebels or suspects in the robbery.

"If my son was not deaf and mute, he could have easily told those policemen that he was not their target or a rebel," Agsayang’s mother Nenita said.

The Agsayangs have bared plans to file murder charges against the policemen involved in the mistaken shooting. This, as the lawman who shot Agsayang has reportedly offered P170,000 to settle the incident.

Chief Superintendent Victor Luga, Cordillera police director, apologized to the Agsayangs three days after the incident.