SC OKs venue transfer of trial on crime watch leader’s slay

The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the transfer of venue of the trial on the case involving a riding-in-tandem police officers involved in the death of a 51-year-old Zenaida Montejo-Luz, a crime watch leader in Gloria municipality, Oriental Mindoro.

The High Court’s Information Chief Atty. Theodore Te said the decision was reached by the Court en banc based on the petition asking for a transfer of venue of the trial to Manila or Makati City including the direct assault with multiple attempted homicide trial from Pinamalayan, Oriental Mindoro to Manila or Makati City as well as the transfer of detention from Oriental Mindoro to the National Bureau of Investigation or Camp Bagong Diwa of the accused.

“The Court granted the request for transfer of venue of trial in the referenced cases from Pinamalayan, Oriental Mindoro to the Regional Trial Court of Manila. The Executive Judge of the RTC of Manila is directed to cause the raffle of this case for trial before the specific branch of the RTC of Manila,’ the high court said.

READ: PNP officials face murder raps for slay of crime watch leader

On the other hand, the high court said it is not up to them but to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to submit their request for the inclusion of Christopher Luz and his co-witnesses to the Witness Protection Program (WPP).

Luz was killed in October last year. She was shot to death in front of her rented apartment that also served as the office of the Citizens Crime Watch which she headed in Barangay (village) Maligaya, Gloria town.

Her attackers, according to witnesses, were two pairs of motorcycle-riding gunmen.

The first pair of attackers managed to flee the crime scene but the second was cornered by responding policemen in the nearby town of Pinamalayan where they were later identified as Senior Inspector Magdaleno Pimentel Jr. of the Police Provincial Public Safety Company and Inspector Markson Almeranez, the police chief of Socorro town in the same province.

The two were both graduates of the Philippine National Police Academy with Almeranez even awarded as outstanding police officer by PNP Director General Ronald dela Rosa a month before the killing.

The victim’s family filed a case of murder against Pimentel and Almeranez before Branch 42 of the regional trial court in Pinamalayan while a separate case of direct assault and frustrated homicide was filed at the municipal trial court by the responding policemen who were wounded when the suspects engaged them in a firefight while trying to escape the crime scene. CDG

READ: Zenaida Luz case: ‘I lost my own defender’