Pampanga police gives security to STAR reporter

MABALACAT, Pampanga —Senior Superintendent Leonardo Espina, Pampanga police director, ordered tight police security for Philippine STAR provincial reporter Ding Cervantes after three unidentified men cocked their rifles at him while he was driving along a dark street here last Friday night.

Espina ordered this town’s police chief, Superintendent Renato Soria, to assign a police security escort to Cervantes immediately after the incident happened between 7:30 and 8 p.m. last Friday.

Cervantes said he was on his way home from Clark Field when a man suddenly appeared as he negotiated a left turn toward 6th street in Barangay Lakandula. The man looked at him and cocked the rifle he was holding in his left hand.

"I initially thought there could have been a burglary or something in the area and the man was running after the burglar," he said.

But a few meters from where the man appeared, Cervantes said two more men showed up and positioned themselves on opposite sides of the road. The two men also had rifles which they cocked as Cervantes neared them.

"I drove a little faster although I made sure that I did not appear panicky so as not to agitate them if their intention was to harm me," he said.

Upon reaching home, Cervantes sent text messages to his media colleagues about the incident. Tonette Orejas of the Philippine Daily Inquirer immediately relayed the information to Espina who wasted no time in providing Cervantes with police security.

Soria dispatched four policemen to Cervantes’ home to map out measures for his security.

Cervantes has been exposing illegal gambling in his recent articles, particularly in Angeles City.

Senior Superintendent Policarpio Segubre, Angeles City police chief, called up Cervantes yesterday morning and offered to provide him with police security.

In 1997, Cervantes survived a gunshot wound inflicted by a security guard while he was covering the closure of a polluting fermentation plant in Apalit, Pampanga.

He was hospitalized for four days in the City of San Fernando, but refused any offer of assistance from the plant’s management.

Retired Police Director General Edgardo Aglipay, who was then the Central Luzon police director, was the one who brought Cervantes to the hospital.

Aglipay later told Cervantes that the shooting seemed premeditated as he cited the trajectory of the bullet which hit him.