Six months without visitors, inmate kills self
After spending more than six months in detention without a single visitor, a 23-year-old inmate of the Manila City Jail killed himself in a prison dormitory toilet in Sta. Cruz, Manila, on Wednesday night. Robert Lyneil Refol, a member of the Sputnik Gang, was found hanging from the ceiling by a green cord tied around his neck by another inmate. Jail officials and other prisoners took him down and rushed him to Jose Reyes Memorial Medical Center but doctors there declared him dead on arrival. Before he hanged himself, Refol, who was facing charges for illegal possession of a deadly weapon, complained in his suicide note that since he was detained in August, he had not been visited by anyone. He also left instructions that he was to be buried in Cavite. According to PO3 Alonzo Layugan of the Manila Police District, Refol should have been released earlier because the charge he was facing carried a penalty of imprisonment ranging from a month to not more than a year. Jeannette I. Andrade
Burglars take wine, gadgets from condo
Burglars with a thirst for expensive liquor made off with several bottles of wine and electronic gadgets worth more than P100,000 from a condominium unit in Malate, Manila. The theft was discovered before noon on Wednesday by the father of the condo owner when he decided to check on the unit at the Pearl of the Orient Tower on Roxas Boulevard. “[The father] was told that [some persons had tried] to break into the unit of his son who is working abroad. When he arrived [at the condominium], he noticed that the door had been forced open and that some of his son’s valuables were missing,” Insp. Jimmy Labarda of the Manila Police District (MPD) theft and robbery section told the Inquirer on Thursday. Marianito Aquisanda reported that the burglars took his son’s liquor collection worth P42,000; a laptop computer valued at P80,000 and a videoke microphone worth P15,000. Operatives of the MPD theft and robbery section said they were conducting follow-up operations for the identification and arrest of the burglars as well as the possible recovery of the stolen items. Jeannette I. Andrade