Carl Arnaiz case: Lawmen’s story clashes with witness account

PO1 Ricky Arquilita and PO1 Jeffrey Perez (2nd and third from left) attend a Senate hearing on the death of Carl Angelo Arnaiz in this file photo. INQUIRER FILE / EDWIN BACASMAS

The account given by two policemen accused of murdering Carl Angelo Arnaiz clashed with the testimony of a witness on the time when the former student of the University of the Philippines was killed.

According to the witness, Arnaiz was shot to death at about 1:30 a.m., while the counter-affidavit of the accused police officers placed the shooting at about 3:30 a.m.

In their joint counter-affidavit, Police Officers 1 (PO1) Jeffrey Perez and Ricky Arquilita said taxi driver Tomas Bagcal sought their help at about 3:30 a.m. while they were on beat patrol along C-3 Road, Caloocan City, last Aug. 18.

They said the driver reported that he had been robbed and gave them a detailed description of the culprit. They then proceeded to the supposed scene of the crime which took them one to two minutes.

“We saw a person whom we suspected to be what Mr. Bagcal described to us… We alighted from our motorcycle and casually walked towards the direction of that person, Mr. Bagcal who was also behind during the case, shouted that the person in front of us was the person who robbed him, we shouted to the person to stop walking while we introduced [ourselves] as policemen,” the two said in their affidavit.

“As we covered behind the post of Meralco in the area, this person, instead of stopping faced us, drew his gun and started shooting us,” their affidavit said. According to them, their instinct told them to fire back.

“We saw this person fell down and slumped to the ground, we waited for a few seconds before we went to him, I (Perez) kicked the gun away from him and we felt that he was no longer moving,” the police officers said.

Their affidavit contradicted the testimony of the witness who said Carl was handcuffed and dragged out of a police vehicle at about 1:30 a.m. The witness said he heard Carl shouting that he was giving up but the policemen still shot him to death.

The testimony of the witness is consistent with the forensic analysis conducted by a team led by Dr. Erwin Erfe. Forensic evidence put the time of death of Arnaiz at about 1:30 a.m. based on the wound on his right eyelid and the bluish discoloration of his mouth and tongue.

The two police officers are facing a complaint for double murder and planting of evidence for the death of Arnaiz and his 14 year old companion Reynaldo “Kulot” De Guzman. The police officers, however, made no mention of Kulot in their counter-affidavit. /cbb