PNP urged to probe death of Aurora cop

CAMP OLIVAS, Pampanga – In his own handwriting hours before he died on Dec. 16 at the emergency room, an Aurora policeman wrote the name of the man he claimed had ordered him killed.

That’s the evidence the family of the late P02 Lourex Sindac now wants the police to look into.

Sindac, 28, was shot in the head in what was reported as an accidental discharge of a weapon by a fellow policeman, PO1 Melvin Hugo.

Hugo is facing a charge for reckless imprudence resulting in homicide that was filed by the Baler police on Dec. 21.

Sindac survived long enough to scribble a name on a page in the notebook of P03 Emilio de la Torre Jr., the case’s investigator, the INQUIRER was told. A copy of this page was attached to a sworn affidavit of Sindac’s mother, Eufrocina.

“Do you know who could have done this to you?” De la Torre wrote in Filipino next to the name Sindac had written down.

However, the Baler police have neither summoned nor identified in the official investigation report the man Sindac named before he died, said SPO1 Ela Marie Sindac-Santiago in a Jan. 4 letter to Provincial Prosecutor Jobert Reyes. Santiago is Sindac’s older sister.

Santiago said the police stopped the investigation after Hugo was charged. She said her brother used to investigate drug-related cases before his death.

In the letter, Santiago said investigators should talk to the man Sindac identified, as well as a witness and Sindac’s colleagues, PO1 Mark Querijero and PO3 Rexie Torre.

The two policemen were drinking beer with Hugo at the Baler police station’s intelligence office on Dec. 15, and invited Sindac to join them.

That was when Hugo accidentally fired his service firearm, a Glock 17 pistol, as he was removing its loaded magazine, according to a report by Senior Insp. Bartolome Antolin, officer-in-charge of the Baler police.

Hugo’s gun was muzzled with tape, a process undertaken by the Philippine National Police to discourage policemen from indiscriminately firing their guns during the holidays.

Sindac’s wife, Elvie, had informed Chief Supt. Rudy Lacadin, Central Luzon police director, about the name Sindac wrote down on De la Torre’s notebook.

She had filed a murder case against Hugo, Torre and Querijero for allegedly conspiring to kill Sindac and destroying evidence. She had asked the National Bureau of Investigation or the police’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group to pursue the probe to “bring justice to my husband.”