Lawyer calls for ‘caution’ vs controversial car dealer issue

AIMEE Torrefranca, the lawyer of controversial car dealer Lynard Allan Bigcas, is appealing to Mayor Vicente Emano to exercise “circumspection in giving order and issuing a statement” against her client.

This, after Emano reportedly ordered the city’s police to arrest Bigcas in connection with the alleged hit-and-run issue the latter is facing.

Torrefranca told Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro there might be a “misapprehension of facts” relayed to Emano regarding the incident.

On March 9, Bigcas allegedly hit three teenagers while reportedly doing “stunt driving” on board his Honda Jazz car along Velez-Fernandez Sts. near Rodelsa Circle.

Witnesses said Bigcas sped off after the incident and left the injured teenagers.

Torrefranca said, however, that Bigcas paid the hospital bills of the three victims and there is a pending settlement with one of the victims who was asking for a compensation of P150,000.

“He said he can no longer work because of that accident and they’re still haggling the amount,” she said.

One of the victims is identified as Gulliver Labangon, 25, a resident of Block 5, Lot 15 Emily Homes Subdivision in Macanhan, Carmen.

It was Labangon who reported the incident to Police Station 9 in Barangay Macasandig.

But Torrefranca clarified there was no arrest warrant, not even a complaint filed against her client, on the alleged hit-and-run issue.

With this, she warned policemen of facing the risk of being “administratively and criminally liable” if they would arrest Bigcas without a warrant of arrest.

Torrefranca said her “coming out into the open” aims to correct the wrong impression against Bigcas since this might affect the pending cases of her client, particularly at the Department of Justice (DOJ).

“It also relayed a wrong message to the people that, it’s as if Bigcas is a hardcore criminal. Because in the first place, there was no hit and run,” she said.

Bigcas is facing a smuggling case and illegal possession of firearms.