CCTV footage may yield clues to who killed Cebu City cop

CCTV footage of the crime and artist’s sketches are being sought by Cebu City police to pin down the suspects in last Saturday dawn’s murder of PO2 Gerlito Estremos.

Chief Insp. Renero Agustin, commander of the Fuente police precinct where Estremos was assigned, said they talked with a taxi driver who supposedly witnessed two men beating up and shooting down Estremos at P. del Rosario Street, Cebu City.

He also said they will ask for security camera footage from the management of the establishments at P. del Rosario Street near the University of San Carlos (USC).

Estremos’s wife Elmera is appealing to the Cebu City government to serve justice for her husband’s death as well as burial assistance and scholarships for their six children.

Estremos’s remains is at the mortuary of the Our Lady of Guadalupe parish and will be buried on Father’s Day on June 16.

Agustin said initial investigation showed that the killers appeared to be based in Cebu.

“We will talk to the management of the establishments near the crime scene today. We’re asking anyone with information on the suspects to share it with us,” Agustin said.

Financial constraints

Elmera said her husband, a native of Camotes Island, worked as a security guard and a credit investigator before he finally joined the police force seven years ago.

“He’s a criminology graduate but it took him sometime before he secured his diploma because of financial constraints. Everything he earned, it went straight to our children’s education,” she said.

Married for 12 years, the couple lived in barangay Guadalupe.

Elmera said she was informed about her husband’s death by her neighbor who heard the news over the radio at 4 a.m last Saturday.

When heading to Fuente police precinct with her eldest daughter, Elmera said she called up her husband’s cell phone and was told to proceed to the Cebu City police’s homicide section at Camp Sotero, Cabahug, Cebu City.

When she got to the homicide section a policeman asked her how many guns and cellphones her husband brought with him when he left their house.

Elmera said she got nervous when she saw her husband’s four cell phones and two guns, one of which had missing bullets.

A good man

She said she and her daughter cried when a policeman confirmed that her husband was lying in state at the funeral parlor.

Elmera recalled that her daughter even asked her husband to wake up so they could go home.

Estremos’s sister-in-law Mae Rufin described him as “an active choir leader, a faithful public servant and a good father to his children.”

She said Estremos was involved in Couples for Christ and  Family Life in Redemptorist Parish.

She said Estremos’s children were supposed to perform in a Father’s Day presentation at the church.

At the wake, a Cebu City Hall representative assured Elmera that burial assistance and scholarships will be given to the family.

One of Estremos’s friends, fellow Leyte native PO1 Manuel Sejano, called the traffic policeman as “sangkay” a Leyte term for friend.

“He was an excellent police officer and a good person,” Sejano said. /Edison A. delos Angeles and Michelle Joy L. Padayhag, Correspondents