Ruby Rose dad questions accused’s hospital arrest

The father of murdered Ruby Rose Barrameda has accused a ranking hospital official of conspiring to keep a principal accused in the hospital and out of detention.

In an interview, Robert Barrameda said he received information that an official of the Philippine Heart Center was helping Manuel Jimenez Jr. “prolong” his stay in the hospital despite his “seeming absence of illness.”

The elder Barrameda did not elaborate.

Jimenez Jr., a lawyer and Ruby Rose’s father-in-law, was among several charged in 2009 with her murder after he was tagged by a fellow accused, Manuel Montero, as the one who ordered the killing.

The lawyer has since been kept in hospital arrest after he complained of chest pains.

According to Barrameda, Senior Supt. Richard Albano, Quezon City Police District director, paid Jimenez a visit in the hospital on the orders of National Capital Region Police Office Director Leonardo Espina and saw him “looking as if he was not sick.” The accused was “strong,” Barrameda quoted Albano as saying.

Thus, the victim’s father said his family would ask the court for an “independent” health checkup for Jimenez Jr.

The checkup, he said, would determine if there were indeed “medical reasons” preventing Jimenez from being detained in jail.

Barrameda said, however, that this motion would have to be filed once hearings at the Malabon Regional Trial Court Branch 170 resumed.

A motion for the inhibition of Judge Zaldy Docena filed by the Jimenez camp, among others, has to be resolved before trial could resume, he said.

“We have many plans, but everything has to be put on hold until (the pending motions) are acted upon,” he explained.

Ruby Rose was locked in a custody battle for her son with her estranged husband Manuel Jimenez III, when she disappeared in 2007 and was later found dead.