Was cop’s stolen gun used in New Year shooting?

Isagani Ancheta, 38, who allegedly fired the bullets that hit the children and was later mauled by residents. Gil Galapuz, with whom Ancheta had a shootout, was rushed to hospital.
PHOTO BY KRIXIA SUBINGSUBING

A rookie policewoman from Manila came to the Caloocan City police headquarters on Tuesday to claim that it was her service firearm that was used in a gunfight that left two minors wounded after they were hit by stray bullets amid the New Year revelry.

The officer said the 9mm Glock 17 Gen 4 pistol used by the suspect in the shooting incident was stolen from her house in the morning of Dec. 10, her birthday, last year.

The Caloocan police asked that her name be withheld in the meantime and only described her as a Police Officer 1 under the Manila Police District’s Station 2 in Tondo.

According to the policewoman, upon waking up in the morning of Dec. 10, she discovered that the gun she kept on her kitchen shelf had been stolen.

She believed that the pistol ended up in the hands of Isagani Ancheta, 38, who was arrested on Monday after he exchanged gunfire with Gil Galapuz but instead hit two 10-year-olds in Barangay 35, Maypajo, Caloocan.

Interviewed in detention on Tuesday, the 38-year-old Ancheta said he only borrowed the gun from a friend he identified only as Joel, a Tondo resident. He admitted shooting at Galapuz but claimed that the latter, a known thug in the area, started the fight.

He turned evasive when told of the wounded children, saying “nobody can really tell” whether the bullets that hit them came from him. “That’s not me,” he said later.

Senior Supt. Jemar Modequillo, Caloocan police chief, said the pistol seized from the suspect bore the serial number PNP75017, which had a match in Camp Crame’s list of service firearms, but that it was  still being checked at press time if it was the one issued to the policewoman.

Meanwhile, the wounded minors — Joven Earl Gaces and his schoolmate Princess Denise Cruzat — remained confined in the hospital, each with a gunshot wound in the stomach. Gaces was still in critical condition because the stray bullet had damaged his liver and pancreas, the Inquirer learned.