Taxi driver of Chit Estella also charged

The taxi driver who ferried the late journalist Chit Estella on the night she was killed is now also facing the same charges as the driver of the bus which rammed the taxi.

The Quezon City Police District has filed criminal complaints against taxi driver Vito Jagunos as well as bus driver Victor Ancheta of Nova Auto Transport, whose bus first hit the ill-fated cab on May 13.

Superintendent Arnold Santiago, Traffic Enforcement Unit chief, said both are facing reckless imprudence resulting in homicide and damage to property and abandonment of one own’s victim—the same raps lodged against Universal Guiding Star driver Daniel Espinosa.

Aside from the two charges, police also added a complaint for hit and run against the three drivers in their supplemental complaint to assistant city prosecutor Ronald Torrijos Jr., the investigating fiscal.

Santiago explained that the charge for abandonment of one’s victim is under the Revised Penal Code, while hit and run is covered by a special law, Republic Act 4136.

A bystander who was near the crash site in front of the UP-Ayala Technohub along Commonwealth Avenue on the night of May 13 told police that Ancheta’s bus first hit Jagunos’s cab before Espinosa did.

Last week, an MGP bus driver also told police that he saw Ancheta’s bus sideswipe the taxi carrying Estella, who was then on her way to meet high school friends at the Technohub.

Santiago said the MGP driver claimed his bus was right behind Ancheta’s just before the crash.

In filing the supplemental complaints, the police official cited their “paint analysis” which showed that a bus bumped the taxi before Espinosa did, based on green stains which didn’t match with the UGS bus.

Ancheta surfaced on Thursday after a notice of appearance was issued to him as part of the QCPD’s reinvestigation into the death of Estella, a UP professor and veteran journalist.

The Nova bus driver admitted he drove the bus with plate number TXE 721 which was identified based on witnesses’ accounts and a license plate disclosed by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority.

According to Ancheta, he avoided the taxi and did not hit it at any point.

Espinosa, his lawyer Salvador Panelo, and UGS had first claimed that it was a Nova Auto Transport bus which hit the taxi before Espinosa did, and that two Nova buses were involved in a race.

Santiago noted that while Ancheta has denied the charges, his claims were overtaken by the two new witnesses’ positive identification of his bus.

Espinosa has yet to submit his counter-affidavit to Torrijos although the driver had maintained that he had no liability in the journalist’s death.

The bus driver fled and went into hiding after the crash but surrendered a week later to Davao City Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.