Taxi driver Tomas Bagcal —RICHARD A. REYES
The Public Attorneys Office (PAO) will block the bid of taxi driver Tomas Bagcal to be taken in as a state witness in the killing of teenagers Carl Arnaiz and Reynaldo De Guzman allegedly by Caloocan City police officers.
PAO chief Persida Acosta said Bagcal did not qualify as a credible witness since he had changed his testimony five times.
PAO represents the parents of Arnaiz, 19, and De Guzman, 14. The teenagers were neighbors in Cainta, Rizal, who were last seen together on the night of Aug. 17.
Arnaiz’s family found him in a Caloocan City morgue on Aug. 28. De Guzman was found dead on Sept. 5 in a creek in Nueva Ecija, his head wrapped in duct tape and his body stabbed over two dozen times.
The teenagers’ death fueled public outcry against police abuses
particularly in Caloocan, where 17-year-old student Kian Loyd Delos Santos was killed allegedly because he fired a gun at officers conducting an antidrug operation on Aug. 16.
Assisted by PAO, the parents of Arnaiz and De Guzman filed two weeks ago a murder complaint in the DOJ against Police Officers 1 Ricky Arquilita and Jeffrey Perez and Bagcal.
Acosta said Arnaiz’s parents had insisted that their son was not a robber, disputing the taxi driver’s claim.
She said they would continue to hold Bagcal as a co-accused in the murder complaint since “it appears there is a conspiracy here… he has a lot to explain.”
“He is a co-conspirator in this case because he legitimized the
defense of the policemen that the teenagers killed were robbers. There is a conspiracy here,” she said.
Bagcal, 54, has claimed Arnaiz, a former University of the Philippines student, tried to rob him at gunpoint the wee hours of Aug. 18.
Bagcal said he overpowered the teenager and turned him over to the Caloocan precinct, but that the teenager was killed by the two police officers.
Bagcal later changed his story when he surrendered to the National Bureau of Investigation, this time saying that a boy believed to be De Guzman was with Arnaiz during the attempted robbery and that Arnaiz used a knife.
“He also keeps on changing the actual time of the incident. How can you place him under the WPP [Witness Protection Program] if he is not telling the truth and he is inconsistent with his statements?” Acosta told reporters.
The PAO chief said they would instead move to place under the WPP another man, his identity still undisclosed, who claimed to have witnessed Arnaiz’s killing.
The man has given a sworn statement saying he saw two police officers drag a handcuffed man out of a patrol car on C-3 Road in Caloocan. The victim was reportedly ordered to kneel and shot dead even after he begged for his life.
The witness also said he saw a boy in the car.
Acosta said the witness had already been interrogated by the NBI and would be evaluated whether he could qualify as a witness.
The preliminary investigation into the Arnaiz-De Guzman murder cases is set for Oct. 10.