“WHERE was the police?”
This is the question Odon Teaño, 76, keeps asking after he lost his daughter Teresa to car thieves the other day.
Teresa was on her way to a yoga class when she was shot and run over by car thieves who took her brand-new vehicle along Kamuning in Quezon City.
“The police were nowhere to be found when my daughter was brutally attacked. Until now no policeman has come and talked to us about what happened and informed us of the progress of the investigation,” Teaño told reporters in a press conference held Friday at St. Peter’s Funeral Homes in Quezon City where a wake is being held for his daughter.
Teaño, a former director of the Department of Interior of Local Government, could not hide his dismay about what he claimed was the lack of police action on the case.
“It seems that there was a lapse in security, considering that Kamuning Road is a very busy street and near key government offices, including Camp Crame and the Kamuning Police Station,” he said.
The father also said he was hoping President Aquino could help make the streets safer for Filipinos.
“There is a breakdown in the peace and order situation and the criminals are more daring than the police,” he added.
“I have worked for the government, including the police, as consultant of internal affairs and I can say that criminals now have become bolder and what they did to my daughter was satanic and evil,” he said.
He said that his daughter, a cashier of the Land Registration Authority, bought her Hyundai Accent on an installment plan and that it was Teresa’s first new car.
“It was a five-day-old car and the thought that it would be taken from her could have been really painful for her,” he said.
“They already robbed her and shot her. Why did they have to run over her?” he added.
With Teaño in the press conference were lawyer Oliver Lozano, father of Emerson Lozano, and Arsenio Evangelista, father of Venson Evangelista, both car robbery-slay victims.
Evangelista also told reporters that he knew the victim because they go to the same yoga class.
“We thought the heinous killings of our sons were the end of it until Teresa was shot and run over by the carjackers,” the two fathers said in a statement.
After Emerson Lozano and Venson Evangelista were abducted and brutally murdered, their charred bodies were found dumped outside Metro Manila.
Their families had blamed the carjacking group allegedly led by brothers Roger and Raymond Dominguez for the killings.