QC cops kill 3 in UP forest drug bust

Three suspected drug peddlers were shot dead by the Quezon City police Friday night after fleeing from a botched entrapment in a village within the University of the Philippines Diliman campus.

The killings added to the recent surge in the number of drug suspects whom the police maintained to be casualties of legitimate operations, in the wake of incoming President Rodrigo Duterte’s strong-arm pronouncements against crime.

The fatalities were identified as Darwin Moralla, a certain Vergel or Rigor, and another unidentified man described to be about 35-40 years old, 5’4” tall, and with tattoos on different parts of the body.

They were shot as they ran away after sensing they were being set up in a buy-bust operation at a shanty in Arboretum Forest, Barangay UP campus, according to the case investigator, PO2 Virgilio Mendoza of the Quezon City Police District.

Five more suspects escaped, Mendoza said. The QCPD had tagged them as members of the Joselito Gonzales drug group, he added.

A team from the district’s Anti-Illegal Drugs-Special Operation Task Group, led by Senior Insp. Dondon Llapitan, set out for the buy-bust on Friday around 10 p.m. Accompanied by an informant, PO3 Antonio Salamanque posed as a buyer and handed the marked money to Vergel.

But the suspects scampered away as they sensed the policemen’s presence in the vicinity. The suspects open fired at the pursuing officers and an exchange of gunfire ensued, according to the QCPD report on the incident.

The police said they recovered from the slain men two .38-cal. revolvers and an improvised firearm loaded with M-16 bullets, along with the buy-bust money worth P8,000, sachets of suspected “shabu,” and drug paraphernalia.