Senate probe: Kids narrate last moments of Kian with cops

PHOTO by RYAN LEAGOGO/INQUIRER.net

Seventeen-year-old Kian Loyd delos Santos was slapped and punched by one of three men when he refused to accept from them what looked like a gun wrapped in a face towel, a 13-year-old girl said in a statement submitted to the Senate.

“No, no,” the witness quoted Delos Santos as saying to the three men in civilian clothes who seized him as he was on his way home in Barangay 160 in Caloocan City on the night of Aug. 16.

The three men turned out to be Caloocan police officers. They claimed Delos Santos was a drug runner and they shot him when he fired at them with a .45-caliber pistol.

But the testimony of the girl and that of another child, a 16-year-old girl, confirmed fears that Delos Santos was killed in cold blood — another victim of police killing in President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs.

The two children testified on what they saw on the night of Aug. 16 to members of the Senate Committee on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs during a closed-door session on Tuesday.

Present were Sen. Panfilo Lacson, the committee chair, and Sens. Risa Hontiveros and Bam Aquino.

Hontiveros had taken custody of the two minors, as well as a 31-year-old woman who saw the policemen taking Delos Santos.

The senator released to reporters the affidavits of the two girls hours after they faced the committee.

The 31-year-old woman, identified as “MC”, who testified in last week’s hearing, identified Delos Santos’ captors as PO3 Ariel Oares, PO1 Jerwin Cruz and PO1 Jeremias Pereda.

In her affidavit, the 13-year-old girl said she was at a pharmacy near her house around 8 p.m. when she saw three men arriving on motorcycles.

Two of the men wore black shirts and the third was in a red shirt and had a mask and a hat on. But the child said she recognized the third man as the drug pusher known in the community as Nonong, or alias Tropa.

“He waits at the pharmacy for the delivery of illegal drugs. He is also known to be an informant of the police,” the child said.

She said the two men in black shirts were armed and were known in the community as policemen.

Frightened, the girl forgot what she was supposed to buy at the drug store. She said she went back home to ask what it was and on her way back to the pharmacy, she saw Nonong pointing to the house of Delos Santos.

The two policemen went to the house and ordered the boy’s younger siblings, Sherry Ann and JR, to raise their hands and not move, the child said.

After they left and went to the pharmacy, the child said she asked one of the siblings what happened. She was told that that the policemen had pointed guns at them.

It was then that Delos Santos passed by and Nonong pointed him out to the policemen.

“I saw Kian was surprised and in disbelief. I was surprised, too, and could not believe what Nonong said because Kian was not involved in drugs,” the child said.