Detainee jumps out of police car; rookie cops fired

Two rookie Quezon City policemen were relieved after a drug suspect they were escorting loosened his handcuff and jumped out of a moving police car on Saturday, prompting the launching of a “massive manhunt.”

Chief Supt. Guillermo Eleazar, Quezon City Police District (QCPD) director, told the Inquirer on Sunday that the two policemen would face criminal and administrative charges as a warning to their colleagues that their duties do not end after a suspect’s arrest.

According to a QCPD report, Police Officers 1 Jayson Landayan and Randy Yape, both assigned to the Novaliches police station, had taken two suspects, one of them Jhan Jhan Abacian, to the Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office to undergo inquest proceedings on Friday.

Suspect’s request

They were heading back to the police station around midnight when Abacian asked the policemen if they could open a window so that he could spit.

At that time, Landayan was driving the police car while Yape was in the backseat with the two drug suspects.

Unknown to them, Abacian had “managed to detach his handcuff from the other suspect,” the report said.

He then jumped out of the window as the police car was running slowly on Quirino Highway due to heavy traffic.

An incident report by Supt. Carlito Grijaldo, commander of Novaliches police station, said that Landayan and Yape were “immediately relieved” as Station Drug Enforcement Unit operatives.

Eleazar said the QCPD Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit was investigating their criminal liability although both could be charged with violating Article 224 of the Revised Penal Code, which penalizes the escape of prisoners due to the negligence of public officers.

Abacian was arrested on April 12 in a buy-bust operation which yielded eight sachets of “shabu” (crystal meth) and a sachet of marijuana.