After a wild goose chase that took them to the provinces of Pampanga and Pangasinan, policemen looking for a Manila barangay chair being sought for the killing of another barangay leader last week finally caught the suspect who, as it turned out, never left the city at all.
On Monday afternoon, members of the Manila Police District (MPD) Sampaloc station found Jonathan Florendo, the 50-year-old chair of Barangay 480, hiding under a bed in a pension house at the corner of Alhambra and Arquiza Streets in Ermita, Manila, just a stone’s throw away from another police station.
His arrest came two days after he shot and killed a colleague, Barangay 473 chair Hilario Romano, 55, during a meeting with other local leaders in a barangay hall on Maria Cristina Street in Sampaloc.
Witnesses said that Florendo was drunk and armed when he walked into the meeting where the need to deploy more watchmen to a high school near the area was being discussed.
At one point, the suspect—who was against the proposed deployment—argued with the victim who later told him that he need not help them if he did not want to.
The irked Florendo then tried to draw his gun but other barangay leaders intervened and one of them took the firearm from him.
Undeterred, he went out and asked his son to go home and get his other gun. He later shot the victim in the chest before he escaped.
“We initially received information that he had gone back to his hometown in Pampanga so we went there. Then somebody fed us a wrong tip that Florendo had been arrested in Pangasinan and we had to verify that,” MPD Sampaloc station commander Superintendent Rolando Balasabas told the Inquirer.
On Monday morning, Balasabas said they received word from an informant that the suspect was hiding at a pension house in Ermita.
The tip proved to be correct. “We almost missed him because he was hiding under a bed and his female companion was trying to shield him from our view,” he added.
“We found two traveling bags full of clothes [inside the room] and the woman with Florendo kept on denying he was there. [She was] standing in front of the bed and pushing my men away from it,” Balasabas said.
A policeman, however, spotted the suspect under the bed and pulled him out by the leg.
“The suspect appeared surprised that [we found him] and was not able to react. He was clutching a pouch bag which contained a .45-cal. pistol and we were able to grab him before he could move,” Balasabas added.
Asked if it was the same gun used in the killing, the police official said Florendo told them that he had gotten rid of the murder weapon—a 9 mm firearm.
“We are still verifying if all these guns have licenses, because if not, he will also face charges of illegal possession of firearms,” Balasabas said.
He added that based on the traveling bags they found inside the suspect’s room, Florendo was about to get out of the city. “He had been hiding at the pension house since the shooting incident,” the policeman said.
The suspect, however, refused to say whether or not he shot the victim when he was presented to reporters by Mayor Alfredo Lim yesterday.
“My advice [to everyone], not just for chairmen, is to keep calm. All disagreements can be resolved peacefully. Look at what happened: One is facing charges, the other lies dead,” Lim said.