Drunk cop kills bus passenger, hurt 2 cops in Cotabato gun rage

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — A policeman landed in jail after killing a fellow bus passenger and hurting two policemen who responded to the incident at the border of Cotabato and Davao del Sur provinces before dawn Saturday, December 28.

The suspect, Police Corporal Alfred Dawatan Sabas of the Police Precinct 7 in General Santos City, was so drunk then, according to his live-in partner, Phoenix Marie Delos Santos and other bus passengers who survived the atrocity unscathed.

In separate initial reports released on Saturday morning, the provincial police offices in Cotabato and Davao del Sur confirmed that  Sabas, who hails from Kidapawan City, is now locked in a detention facility, to be prosecuted for murder and frustrated murder.

Sabas is under the Police Regional Office-12, whose director, Brig. Arnold Peralta Ardiente, had assured reporters to have him discharged dishonorably from the Philippine National Police.

Col. Gilbert Tuzon, director of the Cotabato Provincial Police Office, said Sabas and his girlfriend, Phoenix Marie Delos Santos, first had a loud altercation while inside a bus, en route to Davao City, before he pulled out his Canik 9 millimeter pistol and opened fire at passengers while its driver was maneuvering through a downhill stretch of the Kidapawan-Digos Highway in Barangay Batasan in Makilala, a hinterland town in Cotabato province.

A bus passenger, Reynaldo Bigno, Jr., died instantly from bullet wounds sustained in the gun rage.

The driver of the bus immediately pulled over right before a roadside police checkpoint in the nearby Barangay New Opon in Magsaysay, Davao del Sur, where Sabas had shot and seriously wounded two members of the 11th Regional Mobile Force Battalion under the Police Regional Office-11, Cpl. Kent Maurith Pamaos and Patrolman Russel Love Tapia, when they tried to frisk and disarm him.

Sabas tried to escape but was eventually cornered and arrested by pursuing companions of Pamaos and Tapia, now both confined in a hospital.

Relatives of Sabas in Kidapawan City, the capital of Cotabato province and where his immediate family resides, told reporters that they are certain he is hooked to shabu.

He is a heavy drinker too and always gets into trouble when under the influence of liquor, according to his relatives and companions in the General Santos City Police Office.

Delos Santos, whom he has been living with for more than two years now, is a known peddler of shabu in Kidapawan City.

She was jailed after she fell in a police entrapment operation in February this year in Kidapawan City, but was released on probation after she signed a written commitment to reform for good.