Cops say witnesses running scared

COMEDIAN Willie Nepomuceno narrates how his grandson was shot last week by four men in Marikina City during a press conference in Cubao, Quezon City. Nepomuceno asked for help from Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption’s Dante Jimenez (center) and Boy Evangelista in resolving his grandson’s case. MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

The police on Monday said they were still waiting for witnesses to come forward and provide them with information that can be used to identify the two other suspects in the shooting of comedian-impersonator Willie Nepomuceno’s grandson and another teenager in Marikina City on Jan. 9.

According to Senior Insp. Eduardo Cayetano, city police investigation chief, several of the people who were in the area when Sean Gabriel Nepomuceno, 16, and Franc Rayven Jocson, 17, were shot and wounded have yet to give probers their statements because they were afraid of the suspects who come from rich families.

Cayetano cited a tricycle driver who witnessed the shooting at the corner of Bayan-bayanan Avenue and Bugallon Street but has yet to coordinate with the police.

“This is a group [of suspects] which is moneyed. [Some witnesses] might be running scared,” he said.

The victims were eating with their friends Sherwin Malit (not Maralit as earlier reported) and Angello Abistado, both aged 19, at a burger stand at the corner of Bayan-bayanan Avenue and Bugallon Street at 2:50 a.m.  when four men in a white Ford Fiesta (license plate TIO 181) fired upon their group.

One of the shooters has since been arrested and charged. Mark Bercilla, who was positively identified by Abistado as one of the gunmen, lives in the affluent area of Barangay Marikina Heights which is home to businessmen, retired generals and lawyers, Cayetano said.

Bercilla later tagged Arestes Ronar, who remains at large, as the driver of the Ford Fiesta and the vehicle’s registered owner. According to the police, Ronar’s family owns a popular resort in the city. One of his brothers is also a lawyer and former barangay official, although when contacted, the family denied knowledge of Ronar’s doings.

On Friday, charges of frustrated murder, physical injuries and grave threats were filed by the police against Bercilla, Ronar as well as the two suspects who have yet to be identified. Probers have said that the shooting was a case of mistaken identity as a brawl broke out in the area before the victims arrived.

Case investigator SPO1 Gemma Mirabueno said no witnesses have come forward to help identify the two other suspects despite the fact there were ”many people” in the area at the time of the shooting.

“They are probably afraid and they don’t want to come out,” she told the Inquirer although she said there was also a possibility that witnesses failed to get a good look at the other suspects because it was quite dark in the area where the incident happened.

In the meantime, Cayetano said they were waiting for the owner of an establishment in the area to provide them with  footage taken by a closed-circuit television camera.

The delay in the release of the video, he added, was due to the owner’s insistence that his own people, not the police, handle the processing of the footage.