NBI summons mayor, mom

By: Nancy C. Carvajal - 10 years ago

Mayor Patrick Meneses INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has issued subpoenas to Mayor Patrick Meneses of Bulakan, Bulacan province, and his mother Priscilla in connection with the complaints filed by a University of the Philippines (UP) professor over a Oct. 27 road rage incident involving their vehicles in Quezon City.

“They have admitted that they owned the vehicles involved in the road rage incident and we will invite them to shed light on the incident,” NBI senior agent Danielito Lalucis said, adding that the Meneseses were asked to appear at the bureau this Friday.

Both the mayor and Priscilla had maintained in media statements and interviews that they were not in the two vehicles—a Land Cruiser and an Innova—encountered by UP professor Elizabeth Pangalangan and her family members around noon of Oct. 27 on Congressional Avenue.

According to the professor, who is also the wife of Inquirer publisher Raul Pangalangan, a male passenger in the Innova got off the vehicle and pointed a gun at them, enraged that her vehicle supposedly disrupted his convoy.

With the Meneseses confirming ownership of the vehicles, “it follows they know the persons involved and they could identify them,” Lalucis told the Inquirer on Tuesday.

The Pangalangans believe that the gun-wielding man was a security escort of whoever was in the Land Cruiser.

The Meneseses have since remained silent on the identities of the people inside the two vehicles, except for the driver of the Innova whom Priscilla identified in an Inquirer interview as Joel Piñon. She also claimed that they were merely on an errand that day.

Mayor Meneses, in a Nov. 3 statement, also didn’t give names and only described them as members of his mother’s “staff.”

On Thursday last week, the Pangalangans were presented a police lineup at Camp Karingal, headquarters of the Quezon City Police District. The lineup included a police escort assigned to Priscilla and two Bulacan policemen assigned to Meneses.

But neither Elizabeth nor son Miguel Enrico, who was then driving their vehicle, recognized any of the men in the lineup as the gun-toting Innova passenger.

Chief Insp. Rodel Marcelo, head of the QCPD-Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit, said his office had sent written invitations to the Meneseses but they had yet to respond.

Elizabeth Pangalangan, who is also the director of the UP Law Center’s Institute of Human Rights, later said they were also considering filing a complaint for obstruction of justice against the mayor and his mother, aside from the complaint for grave threats they earlier filed in the NBI.