POSTHUMOUS RECOGNITION The PNP Medal of Merit awarded by PNP Director General Oscar Albayalde to Senior Insp. Manuel Junior Taytayon lies on top of the slain officer’s coffin at Veronica Memorial Chapel in Pasay City. Taytayon was just 28 years old. —LYN RILLON
The father of slain Pasay police intelligence chief, Senior Insp. Manuel Taytayon Jr., has called for a thorough investigation of the circumstances surrounding his son’s death during an operation to capture an escaped murder suspect.
“After seeing the body of my son, there’s no escaping the fact that something is wrong. Why did he have so many gunshot wounds on his back when the enemy was in front of him?” PO2 Manuel Taytayon Sr. said on Tuesday at his son’s wake in Pasay City.
Initial police reports said that the 28-year-old Taytayon died after a shootout with Narc Tulod Delemios, who was accused of killing Grab driver Gerardo Maquidato Jr.
The shootout took place inside the suspect’s house at Don Carlos Revilla Village on Nov. 25.
Months-long hunt
The victim and his men had been trying for months to recapture Delemios who escaped from the city jail in August. On Sunday, they went to his house based on a tip that he had been spotted there.
After he was shot, the younger Taytayon managed to fire back at the suspect, triggering a shootout that left Delemios dead.
The police official was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
An autopsy of his body conducted by the Philippine National Police (PNP) Crime Laboratory showed that he sustained five gunshot wounds — four in the back and one in front.
The fatal shot entered through his upper back shoulder and exited through his front midsection, the autopsy report said.
Chief Insp. Wilfredo Sangel, the chief of the Pasay police investigation section, however, noted that Scene of the Crime Operatives had confirmed that the two bullet slugs believed to have killed the police official matched the ones taken from Delemios’ 9mm firearm.
Investigators found a total of 18 cartridges at the scene, all from 9mm firearms—the same guns being carried by all nine policemen involved in the Nov. 25 operation.
On Tuesday, PNP Director General Oscar Albayalde conferred the Medal of Merit on the slain policeman and assured his family of a “fair and honest investigation.”
Despite this, the victim’s father called on the PNP to dismiss from the service the police officers who were with his son during the operation, calling them “cowards and morons.”
The older Taytayon said his family would ask for a reautopsy of his son’s body as well as a separate probe to be conducted by the National Bureau of Investigation.
“We want to know the truth. The police are already investigating but we want to make sure whether there was foul play or not,” he added.
Sangel said they respected the family’s sentiments and decision but also assured them that “we are with them in finding out the whole truth.”
According to Sangel, the eight other policemen who were with the younger Taytayon have already been relieved from their posts and ordered to report to the Pasay City police station’s holding unit.
They were also disarmed and their service firearms would be subjected to tests.
The slain police official graduated from the PNP Academy in 2012. He was first assigned to the Pasay police in February and had served as intelligence section chief for just a month before he was killed.
Big loss
“He was a big loss. He was young, always quiet, but hardworking. He was really inclined toward operations,” the Pasay police chief, Senior Supt. Noel Flores, said of the victim.
Flores described the junior Taytayon as a “hands-on” police official who preferred to be at the frontline during operations rather than at the back — a trait he also displayed when he was deputy chief of the Pasay police antidrugs unit and commander of the Libertad police community precinct.