Pasig police report cop’s ‘suicide,’ but father is unconvinced

The father of a 27-year-old Pasig City policewoman who was found dead on New Year’s Eve said he was not convinced by the investigation report saying that she committed suicide.

Pedro Ngitit, the father of PO1 Estrella Labador, said he found it hard to believe that his daughter had taken her own life by shooting herself in the head.

According to Ngitit, Labador called him up on Dec. 28 to ask for advice as she spoke of her plan to transfer to another police unit.

“She told me she had problems at work and if something were to happen to her, a coworker might be behind it… Everything she said was right,” he told the Inquirer in an interview on Tuesday.

“She said her name was not included among the arresting members after a [successful] operation even though she worked on the case. That’s why she refused to join the next operation. She would just get tired, she said. She wanted to transfer to another unit… She wanted to go back to the province but she was not allowed [to do so],” the father added.

“I want to know what really happened to her,” said Ngitit, who noted that Labrador was the seventh and “the bravest” of his 12 children. He said he would ask a lawyer-friend to help him pursue a case.

Labador was recently assigned to the Pasig City Police Drug Enforcement Unit. She lived in an apartment on Dela Paz Street, Barangay Caniogan, Pasig, which she shared with other police officers from different units.

Based on a Pasig police report sent to Eastern Police District (EPD) director, Chief Supt. Reynaldo Biay, Labador shot herself in the head around 10 a.m. on Dec. 31 inside her room.

The report signed by city police chief, Senior Supt. Orlando Yebra Jr., considered her death a suicide.

Yebra explained that based on the investigation, Labador was depressed and had a serious problem, but that “she did not tell anyone what that problem was.”

Her housemates, PO1s Runckle Dinamling and Jimmy Dinamling of Police Community Precinct 6, and PO1 Marilyn M. Madarang of the EPD, were watching TV on the ground floor when they heard a gunshot coming from Labador’s room on the second floor, the report added.

The three ran upstairs and found Labador lying in bed with a head wound. Her service firearm, a 9mm pistol, was found next to her body.

They brought Labador to the hospital where she was declared dead on arrival. Crime scene investigators recovered a bullet casing in the room of Labador, who tested positive for gunpowder.

“We are ruling out foul play. It’s clear it was a suicide based on the autopsy and the statement of [witnesses]. Her father probably found it hard to take what happened to her,” Yebra said in a text message sent to the Inquirer.

Investigators are looking into different angles, including work and personal issues, as Labador’s reason for killing herself. She left behind a husband and a 4-year-old son.