Party of 5 tagged as source of party drugs

YOUNG AND BUSTED The arrested drug suspects cover their faces at the NBI media briefing on Wednesday. The bureau alleged that they operated a drug laboratory in Parañaque City, as shown by the alleged samples seized from the group. PHOTOS BY EDWIN BACASMAS

“This syndicate is like a monster.”

This was how an official of the National Bureau of Investigation described a group of five people arrested on Tuesday in Parañaque City for alleged manufacture and sale of illegal drugs.

“This is a major breakthrough because we were able to crack a syndicate manufacturing synthetic drugs,” Joel Tovera, chief of the NBI’s anti-illegal drugs division, told reporters on Wednesday.

Tovera said the suspects—Marc David Deen, 28, Martin Dimacali, 21, Tommy Halili, 28; Seergeoh Villanueva, 30, and Erika Dianne Valbuena, 26—were all from “well-off” families.

They were also present at the May 21 CloseUp Forever Summer concert in Pasay City, where five people collapsed and later died in the hospital due to suspected party drug use.

The NBI is still investigating whether all of them sold drugs at the concert. But according to Tovera, a politician’s son and his friends bought drugs from Dimacali that night.

The bureau got this information from the politician, whose name was withheld in view of the ongoing probe. Tovera quoted the politician’s son as telling his father: “Dad, I’m one of the victims. I’m just thankful I didn’t die.”

The son, Tovera said, bought drugs from Dimacali without getting the latter’s name first—but managed to take a photo of the alleged peddler during the party.  The father then showed the photo to the NBI.

Another informant, meanwhile, told Tovera’s team that a group of “yuppies” was manufacturing and peddling synthetic drugs and that they were staying at a unit in a luxury condominium in Parañaque City.

When an operation was launched against the group on Tuesday afternoon, the agents recognized Dimacali as the person in the photo given by the politician, Tovera said.

The first to be arrested was Villanueva, who sold drugs to an undercover agent just outside the condominium building. An NBI team then rushed to the unit on the 5th floor, where Deen and Valbuena lived as a couple.

But according to Tovera, a security guard alerted the other suspects in the unit about the buy-bust operation involving Villanueva, allowing them to flush drugs down the toilet before the agents could arrest them. A sixth suspect also managed to escape.

The security guard was not arrested as Tovera said the NBI was still studying whether to charge him as well.

As Tovera described it, the unit had been turned into a “kitchen-type” drug laboratory. The suspects also yielded a stash of cocaine, marijuana and paraphernalia needed to manufacture synthetic drugs, including empty drug capsules, he said.

Many ways to serve justice

“There are many ways to give justice to those who died (in the May 21 concert). Jailing the drug peddlers would be one of them,” Tovera added.

Dimacali’s father, Robbie, who arrived at the NBI on Wednesday, maintained that his son was at the unit Tuesday afternoon not for any drug-related activity but only to get a cell phone he earlier left there.

Robbie said his son had undergone a drug rehabilitation program after his arrest in Las Piñas City two years ago. “My wife and I are still trying to make sense of what happened,” he said when approached by reporters.

According to the NBI, Deen claimed to be self-employed but had a calling card saying he’s an account manager of a real property web portal.

Halili described himself as an employee but the NBI is checking his connections with a financial service company.

Villanueva said he is a real estate manager.

Probers having difficulty with hospitals

Meanwhile, the police have asked 35 hospitals in Metro Manila to disclose if they had treated persons who fell ill at the May 21 concert and whose cases remain unreported to authorities.

The National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) asked for a list of such patients in letters sent out to the hospitals on Monday, according to  Senior Supt. Joel Doria, the newly designated spokesperson of the special task group investigating the case.

“We are having a difficult time because some doctors don’t want to talk and are citing doctor-patient privilege,” Doria said, noting that investigators had been inquiring with various hospitals since the concert deaths.

They are also still waiting for the results of the toxicology and histopathological exams conducted by the Philippine National Police Crime Laboratory on two of the five fatalities, namely Ken Miyagawa and Eric Anthony Miller, he said.

Doria replaced Supt. Jenny Tecson, the Southern Police District spokesperson, in the task group after the NCRPO chief, Director Joel Pagdilao, took over the probe earlier this week. With a report from Kristine Felisse Mangunay

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