Manila, Philippines—A swollen right eye was all the evidence that Inquirer columnist and radio host Ramon Tulfo brought to the prosecutor’s office yesterday.
Tulfo filed grave coercion and physical injury charges against show biz couple Raymart Santiago and Claudine Baretto and six others who ganged up on him at the airport last Sunday in what netizens billed the “Thrilla in Naia.”
Wearing the same vest he had during the attack, Tulfo said he decided to press charges against the Santiagos because of the beating he received from the group.
Despite being outnumbered, “I did not back down,” said Tulfo.
“I would have charged this to experience But the cussing I received from her [Claudine] changed my mind. Besides, this should serve a lesson to them to respect lowly people (“maliliit na tao”),” he said.
He showed to reporters his swollen right eye, which he said had been operated on last year. He also said that he was still feeling pain in his nape.
Tulfo had just arrived from Davao on Sunday morning when he heard a woman berating a Cebu Pacific ground staff for “her mishandled luggage.”
He went near the airline’s complaints desk and pulled out his mobile phone to document the incident, the photos he hoped to use as part of a future column.
But as he was taking photos, a man approached him and instructed him to surrender the phone.
Tulfo refused and he was mauled by the man, whom he later learned to be Raymart Santiago, and several others who reportedly were the actor’s companions.
A clip of the brawl has been uploaded to the video-sharing website YouTube and passed around the social networking site Facebook.
In a TV interview, a woman who requested anonymity claimed she witnessed how Tulfo pushed Barretto aside during the melee, a charge that the columnist denied.
She also challenged Tulfo to apologize to the Santiagos, which he dismissed saying that he did nothing wrong.
Two Cebu Pacific passenger arrival agents told the Ninoy Aquino International Airport police they were “verbally assaulted” by actress Claudine Barretto after the airline off-loaded her group’s bags from a midday flight from Caticlan.
Cid Charisse Bocboc and Cristina Anne Ilagan made the disclosure in a “written statement” to the police intelligence and investigation department of NAIA.
Candice Iyog, Cebu Pacific vice president for marketing and distribution, said Cebu Pacific had to off-load some luggage from that flight due to the Caticlan airport’s weight limit requirements. She said the airline strictly follows these requirements for safety reasons.
Iyog said the same bags were promptly loaded on another Manila-bound flight which arrived past noon last Sunday.
In an ABS-CBN TV interview, Raymart Santiago blamed Cebu Pacific’s off-loading of their bags as the root cause of their troubles.
He also denied Tulfo’s allegation that he tried to grab Tulfos cell phone. Inquirer