MetroBriefs

QC cop hit by bus; angry mob collars driver

A POLICEMAN was run over by a speeding bus at a busy intersection on Edsa, Quezon City, as he was walking back to his patrol car Wednesday night. PO3 Reynaldo Tumala, 52, was declared out of danger though he remained confined for further tests at East Avenue Medical Center at press time. The bus driver, Paulo Botin, ended up in the same hospital after angry bystanders mauled him and pelted him with rocks to prevent his escape. Tumala, a resident of Caloocan City and a member of the Quezon City Police District’s (QCPD) Masambong station, was on patrol at the corner of Edsa and Congressional Avenue in Barangay Magsaysay when hit by an Admiral bus around 9 p.m. The officer sustained cuts in the face and legs and was scheduled Thursday to undergo tests for chest pains. The QCPD’s Traffic Sector 6 said Botin, 34, tried to run away and abandon his bus but was blocked by the bystanders. Julie M. Aurelio

Manila street yields corpse on eve of Nazarene feast

RESPONDING to a bomb scare, police instead found a man’s corpse stuffed in a box on a Manila street on Wednesday. The body was found at the corner of Carriedo and Estero Segada Streets in Sta. Cruz, a few blocks from Quiapo Church, on the eve of the Black Nazarene procession. In a statement to the police, pedicab driver Aron Abuganda said two men left the box at the intersection around 3 p.m. and asked the street vendors to watch over the package while they look for a tricycle. But when the men failed to return after an hour, Abuganda started to suspect that the box contained a bomb and alerted the nearby police station at Plaza Miranda. Supt. Aldrine Semacio Gran of the Manila Police District said the dead male bore torture marks, with the hands and legs bound with rope and the face wrapped in packaging tape. The victim appeared to be in his late 20s and about 5’4” in height, Gran added. Maricar B. Brizuela