Charges filed vs Tagaytay cops over arrest of stem cell ‘doctor’
SAN PEDRO CITY, Laguna, Philippines – The lawyer of stem cell therapist Antonia Park, who was earlier implicated in the death of an Ateneo student, sued members of the Tagaytay City police in relation to his client’s arrest outside a Cavite court last week.
Lawyer Stephen Cascolan, the counsel of Park, claimed that the arresting policemen used “excessive force in physically detaining (Park) and causing injury to her” when they served an arrest warrant on May 6.
Park, who faced estafa charges in relation to her alternative medicine practice, had just finished attending a court hearing at the regional trial court (RTC) branch 8 in Tagaytay City when accosted by policemen.
The Tagaytay City police was then armed with a warrant issued by the Quezon City RTC Branch 222 over a different estafa case filed by a certain Isidro Grumo in 2009.
In a copy of the four-page complaint filed on Monday afternoon, Cascolan asked the Office of the Ombudsman to place under preventive suspension Supt. Ferdinand Quirante, Tagaytay City police chief, Police Officer 3 Elmer Dimaculangan, and Police Officer 1 Jenny Cosino.
Also named a respondent in Cascolan’s complaint was Bernard Tan, the father of Park’s former patient and Ateneo de Manila University student Katherine Grace Tan.
Katherine died in 2013 after seeking treatment from Park’s Green and Young Health and Wellness Center in Tagaytay City.
In 2014, Bernard charged Park, the same therapist who administered the stem cell procedure on former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, with homicide but the case had just been dismissed this month.
Cascolan said Bernard was the one who provided the Tagaytay police a copy of the 2009 warrant, paving the way for his client’s arrest on May 6.
“Enforcers Dimaculangan and Cosino strongly pulled the left arm of Ms. Park as well as forcefully pulled her hair towards them,” Cascolan said in the complaint, a copy of which was emailed to the Inquirer.
Cascolan added that in the process, he too was “pushed” away by the policemen and sustained injuries himself.
Sought for comment, Quirante, in a phone interview, insisted that the law enforcers went through the “legal and proper” manner of serving an arrest warrant to a “wanted person.”
He said they were only acting on a request for police assistance by Bernard, who provided them a “live” or existing court-issued warrant.
“Our policemen were in uniform. One of them was female in consideration to the person they were to arrest,” the police chief said.
Park, 44, suffers from mild hypertension, according to her lawyer.
She was released also on May 6 after posting a P60,000 bail, but not without charges the police filed against her and Cascolan for attempting to resist arrest and interfering in a police operation, Quirante added. SFM
