‘Resbak’? Missing Manila cop fished out with ear cut off

Did the drug dealers gang up on them or were they killed in retaliation for last week’s shoot-out in Tondo?

The policeman who was reported missing on Sunday was found dead in the waters off Navotas City Tuesday afternoon, a day after the body of his female informant was discovered also along the Manila Bay coastline.

Fishermen found the decomposing body of Senior Police Officer 2 Teofilo Panlilio floating off Sitio Pulo, Barangay Tanza. The victim was stripped to his underwear, bore bruises and four gunshot wounds in the body and face, and had his “right ear cut off,” said Manila Police District homicide section deputy chief Senior Inspector Ismael de la Cruz.

Panlilio, 54, a member of the MPD headquarters support unit, was last seen alive on Saturday with his female drug informant, Jennifer Clemente alias “Bangenge,” a resident of Rodriguez Street, Binondo.

The two left the MPD headquarters together, with Panlilio telling his colleagues that he was going to Isla Puting Bato in Tondo, Manila, for an antidrug operation.

For now, these parting words are providing investigators a lead as to why the two ended up dead. “He went to that area, a known ‘shabu’ hotspot, almost every day,” homicide section chief Senior Insp. Joselito de Ocampo said in an interview.

“The shabu dealers may have been affected by his presence because he frequented the area in his police uniform,” he said. “They probably decided to gang up on him.”

Aside from picking up drug suspects, he said, Panlilio would also apprehend residents involved in the videokarera (virtual horseracing) racket.

De Ocampo said the MPD was also looking into the possibility that Panlilio was killed in retaliation—resbak in street lingo—for the killing last week of four crime suspects in a “shoot-out” with Manila policemen at Baseco Compound, also in Tondo.

Clemente’s bullet-riddled body was found Monday night on the shoreline near Davila Street in Navotas. She was said to be Panlilio’s informant on drug related activities particularly in Tondo.

When Panlilio didn’t return home on Sunday, his wife, Adelaida, 57, a city hall employee, reported him to be missing.

His family, who lived on Varona Street also in Tondo, later got word from Isla Puting Bato residents that a policeman had been shot and the body brought to the breakwater by boat, said investigator PO3 Jayjay Jacob. With a report from Kristine Felisse Mangunay