Prosecutor gets parting ‘choke’ from convict

Senior Assistant State Prosecutor Richard Fadullon INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—A ranking public prosecutor got an unlikely victory souvenir Thursday courtesy of a man he had sent to prison for homicide and kidnapping.

“Akala ko kurot lang (I thought it was just a pinch),” said Senior Assistant State Prosecutor Richard Fadullon, referring to the injury he got in his last encounter with Onofre Surat Jr., an American citizen who lunged at the government lawyer after receiving a guilty verdict from a Quezon City court.

The incident happened around 10 a.m. inside the courtroom of Judge Manuel Sta. Cruz Jr. of Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 226, minutes after the promulgation of Surat’s case.

Fadullon suffered a gash in the neck after Surat, who managed to attack despite being handcuffed and surrounded by three security escorts, tried to choke the prosecutor who was then standing in front of him. Fadullon left the court bleeding and had to be given first-aid treatment.

Subdued by the guards, Surat was whisked out of the courtroom and brought back in a van to a detention center in Taguig City.

But before they parted ways, Fadullon and the convict managed to have a final exchange. “Before I was able to say anything, Surat cursed and threatened to kill me,” Fadullon told the Inquirer hours after the incident.

Sta. Cruz sentenced Surat to life imprisonment without chance of parole for the kidnapping and killing of Mark Harris Bacalla in 2001. Court records showed that Bacalla died of asphyxiation after a rug was placed in his mouth while he was being transported in a vehicle by a kidnap-for-ransom group said to be headed by Surat.

Surat was arrested with two other suspects in 2001 but was able to escape. He was rearrested in 2009.

Before the attack, Fadullon recalled, Surat turned to him to say: “I am sorry but I did not do it.”

Fadullon also noted that before the proceedings started, he asked Surat’s escorts to put some distance between him and the victim’s family. This “precautionary” measure was necessary since opposing parties in a case tend to become emotional during the promulgation, he explained.

He said it was the first time in his 20 years as a prosecutor that he was physically assaulted in connection with a case.

Fadullon once headed the prosecution panel in the Maguindanao massacre case and the rebellion case against the Magdalo soldiers who staged the 2003 Oakwood mutiny. He also served in the plunder trial of deposed President Joseph Estrada.

At the Department of Justice, Prosecutor General Claro Arellano called on court officials to tighten security in their courtrooms, saying “the assault showed some laxity” on the part of court personnel.

“Injury could have been avoided,” Arellano said in a text message to reporters. The incident, he added, showed “the risks that prosecutors face in the performance of their duties.”

Fadullon was “doing OK” at press time, he added.

Supreme Court administrator Midas Marquez said he had asked the Quezon City executive judge for a report on the incident. “Let me reiterate to all our judges and court personnel the strict observance of security protocols,” he said.—With reports from Julie M. Aurelio and Jeannette I. Andrade

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