‘Find Ruby Rose star witness or else…’

MANILA, Philippines—Two weeks.

This was the deadline given by the crime watch group Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) for five police officials to find the accused-turned-state witness in the Ruby Rose Barrameda case who disappeared while in their custody.

Dante Jimenez, VACC founding chair, said that should Deputy Director General Leonardo Espina, Supt. Ronald Lee and three other policemen in charge of securing Manuel Montero fail to account for him within the given period, the anticrime group would help the Barrameda family file charges against them for gross negligence.

Espina, who was promoted last year to chief directorial staff of the Philippine National Police, was the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) director while Lee was deputy official of the NCPRO Regional Police Intelligence Operations Unit (RPIOU) when Montero disappeared from their custody in March 2013.

Montero later told a Malabon court that he was retracting all his statements implicating Ruby Rose’s father-in-law Manuel Jimenez Jr., husband Manuel Jimenez III, uncle-in-law Lope Jimenez and several others in her death. He has not been seen or heard from since then.

Jimenez said the VACC would hold a “mass action” in Mendiola, Manila, on March 31 to call for justice in Ruby Rose’s case. The Barrameda family marked her seventh death anniversary last week.

“It’s been a year since Montero disappeared and he was even caught on a closed-circuit television camera casually leaving the [RPIOU] office. It’s too much to bear… They (the authorities) are so slow,” he added.

Ruby Rose disappeared in 2007 while she was battling her husband in court for custody of their children. Her body was found two years ago inside a steel drum dumped in the waters off Navotas City.