It’s possible Mayor Rolando Espinosa was armed when a contingent of cops broke into the jail to “search” his cell.
Men in his line of business survive by being more nervous, more suspicious, more cautious.
It’s possible the policeman who shot him did so in self-defense. The lights were out, it was pitch-black at 4 o’clock in the morning, the prison guards they encountered were “hostile” and possibly friendly with the mayor.
But, was it not possible for the cop who pulled the trigger to stop after the first shot? Even in the dark, four shots is three too many, and if the night was as dark as we can only imagine, how was he able to score four fatal shots in the chest?
Listeners tuned in to the Senate investigation of the “overkill” were deprived of the chance to hear the full story of such an exciting, real-life thriller complete with cinematic flourishes – lights out, prisoners awakened in the dead of night, cops overcoming jail guards, two men killed behind bars, locked up in a cage – when all the operation required was a search of “the premises.” All because the interrogating senators did not ask any follow-up questions.
As soon as the policeman owned up, the interrogators dropped the ball, satisfied they had elicited what sounded as good as a confession, and proceeded to another line of questioning.
The mystery of cell no. 1 and cell no. 7 (where the other fatality, Raul Yap, was detained) has not been cleared up; it’s almost as if the committee of ex-police general Sen. Ping Lacson wanted to keep the juiciest details to themselves.
Here he was, the cop-“hero” admitting his role in the take-down of a “high-value target,” and there we were, hanging on to his every word – actually, cryptic replies in a few words – and that was that!
With President Duterte openly siding with the raiding party and the raiders confined to quarters, we have more reason to speculate, and speculate, fill in the blanks, look for the missing pieces in the puzzle. How fair is that?
(Jullie Y. Daza)