WAS an active police officer involved in the ambush of Daanbantayan Mayor Vicente Loot and his companions in the New Maya Port last May 13?
Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Oscar Albayalde urged Loot, a retired police chief superintendent, to talk to investigators of the Special Investigation Task Group (SITG) Maya, which was tasked to gather information and identify those who ambushed the mayor.
Supt. Reyman Tolentin, spokesperson of the Police Regional Office (PRO) 7, said that they are awaiting the outcome of the investigation after they received reports that Loot suspected that an active policeman was one of those who ambushed him.
Four persons, three of them working for Loot, suffered injuries during the attack that took place on the eve of the village and youth council elections. Loot and his family were unharmed.
Tolentin said that they have yet to receive the official report from the SITG but they will wait for Loot’s affidavit.
“We’ll see if it will be reflected and he can really pinpoint. It’s up to the SITG to determine, if they would determine, who is the police officer Mayor Loot referred to,” Tolentin said.
In a separate interview, Loot said that contrary to the statement of President Rodrigo Duterte, he has never been in Ozamiz City in his whole life.
“I don’t know where the President is getting his information. I was never assigned in Ozamiz (City) even during my younger years. As a police general, I was assigned only in the training service in Camp Crame,” Loot said.
“I never said or admitted anything of that sort to anybody about dealing with shabu, and I am challenging the President to prove it. That’s highly abnormal and ridiculous for a person to say that to a President,” Loot said.
Mayor Loot has appealed to the media, his friends, and all the people who knew him to vouch that he has never been to Ozamiz City and that President Duterte’s information was false.
On the other hand, Loot was elated by the support the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) Sandigan Class of 1982 expressed, after the May 13 ambush.
The official statement, submitted to the Philippine National Police director general, was signed by some 100 retired generals and officers of the PNP and Armed Forces of the Philippines.
It denounced the “cowardly attack” on Loot, who is a member of PMA Class of 1982 and his family’s party while they were alighting from a motorized banca. During his visit to Cebu last weekend, President Duterte repeated his allegations against Mayor Loot, which he first made in July 2016. (JOB, EOB)