Police exec fears for life: ‘They’ll kill me like Mayor Espinosa’

Supt. Lito Cabamongan. Photo by Dexter Cabalza

The senior police officer who was arrested by narcotics operatives during an alleged pot session claimed on Friday he may get killed while inside his detention cell in Las Piñas police station.

READ: Muntinlupa Crime Lab chief caught in ‘shabu’ session

Supt. Lito Cabamongan, the former head of the Alabang satellite office of the Philippine National Police’s Southern Police District Crime Laboratory, said he could “share the fate of slain Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr.”

Cabamongan said his informants told him in a phone call that some police operatives are plotting to kill him while detained.

“They said they are planning to apply a search warrant on me because they will claim that I have a firearm while in jail… The police who will serve the warrant will then kill me,” he said.

“I have already told the police guards here to search now, that I do not have a gun,” he told reporters.

Espinosa and another inmate, Raul Yap, were killed in an alleged shootout with members of the PNP-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group Region VIII in November last year inside the Baybay, Leyte Subprovincial Jail.

READ: NBI: Mayor Espinosa was murdered, defenseless

CIDG-8 personnel were to serve a search warrant against Espinosa amid an allegation that he illegally possessed firearms.

Cabamongan was arrested with a female cohort, Nedy Sabdao, during a shabu session in a shanty in Everlasting Homes, Barangay (village) Talon 4.

The PNP Crime Lab in Camp Crame in Quezon City said Cabamongan and Sabdao were positive for shabu in the initial tests conducted. Another drug test would be conducted to confirm the results.

Both were inquested at the Las Piñas City Prosecutor’s Office past 3 p.m. for violating Sections 13 (possession of dangerous drugs during a social gathering), 14 (possession of drug paraphernalia) and 15 (use of dangerous drugs)./rga