NBI witness vs Ivler no-show; court irked

A Quezon City court has ordered an officer of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to explain his failure to show up in court as a witness against road rage suspect Jason Ivler.

Judge Luisito Cortez of the QC Regional Trial Court’s Branch 84 noted that NBI special agent Emmanuel Lapus’s repeated absences have delayed the hearings of the murder case.

Lapus was given five days to submit his written explanation for not attending the hearings on March 19 and on April 13, when he was supposed to testify for the prosecution.

Assistant chief state prosecutor Richard Anthony Fadullon said his team earlier learned that Lapus, despite a special order directing him to attend Friday’s hearing, was then in Palawan purportedly for an assignment.

Fadullon added that the NBI agent was told as early as March that he was expected in court that day.

“What we are requesting is that Lapus be made to explain his failures to attend the hearings … This is causing a delay at the expense of the court,” Fadullon told the court on Friday.

Should Lapus still fail to show up at the next hearings on April 27, May 11 and May 25, the prosecution will present Ronan Masacupan, a ballistics officer from the PNP Firearms Investigation Division in Camp Crame.

In an earlier interview, Fadullon said the NBI recovered a pistol from the house of Ivler’s mother in Blueridge Subdivision where the road rage suspect exchanged gunfire with agents out to arrest him on Jan. 19, 2010.

Ivler had gone into hiding for two months after he was tagged as the one who allegedly shot dead Renato Ebarle Jr. in a traffic altercation on the night of Nov. 19, 2009.

Fadullon told reporters on Friday that the NBI recovered .45 caliber slugs from Ebarle’s Toyota Land Cruiser, which he said matched the gun found at the house of Marlene Aguilar-Pollard, Ivler’s mother.

“That is what we are trying to prove,” the government prosecutor said of Masacupan’s expected testimony.