Raps down to homicide; Daza son-in-law posts bail

The son-in-law of former Quezon City Rep. Nanette Castelo-Daza, suspect in the Feb. 10 killing of her former boyfriend, was released from detention on Monday afternoon after posting a P40,000 bail.

Bulacan provincial board member Romeo Allan Robes gained provisional liberty after the prosecutor reduced the charge to homicide. Police initially charged him with murder, a nonbailable offense.

Robes, 38, faces trial before the Quezon City Regional Trial Court for the fatal shooting of Daza’s ex-boyfriend, Noel Orate Sr., on Friday night last week at her house in Teachers Village-East.

The Dazas and the Orates later spoke to the press over the weekend to give their respective versions of the incident.

Robes and the Dazas said the suspect acted in self-defense after the victim allegedly barged in and tried to hold them hostage over his soured 10-year relationship with the former lawmaker. Daza, who also injured her foot in the commotion, said Orate was trying to win her back after she broke up with him last month.

Orate’s heirs vehemently denied this, saying it was Daza who asked their father to come over and that he was the one who sought the breakup. They insisted that their father’s killing was an act of murder.

The victim’s son and namesake, Noel Jr., later appealed to the National Bureau of Investigation to conduct its own probe of his father’s death.

The Orates’ lawyer, Eduardo Bringas, said he will also file for a motion for reinvestigation before the court.

Crime scene investigators said Oreta sustained five gunshot wounds which killed him on the spot, and that a fully loaded handgun was found near his body.

Robes, husband of Quezon City Councilor Jessica Castelo Daza, yielded a pistol when he surrendered to responding policemen minutes after the shooting. He tested positive for gunpowder burns the next day.

Chief Insp. Rodelio Marcelo of the Quezon City Police District’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit said the Bulacan official was released at around 5 p.m. Monday after posting bail at the sala of Judge Luis Zenon Maceren of QC-RTC Branch 218.