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Thursday, June 09, 2005
Cops kept trying to pin murder on another suspect, widow says
Hours before Edgar Damalerio was shot dead last May 12, 2002, his wife warned the former Pagadian City journalist, through text messages, that two men on a motorcycle were observing their home.
Gemma Damalerio said her husband replied to the message she sent around 6 p.m. by telling her to lock up the house. He was on his way home.
That text message, a tearful Gemma told Judge Ramon Codilla, was the last thing she’d ever hear from her husband.
Less than two hours after that, the late Edgar Amorro sent her a text message that only read: “Mads, pads gi pusil. Mendero Medical Center.”
Amorro was the Damalerio couple’s kumpadre. He was their child’s godfather and was the journalist at the time of the shooting.
Gemma was the second prosecution witness presented before Judge Codilla in the marathon hearings for the Damalerio murder case, now being heard in the Cebu Regional Trial Court.
She was at the witness stand from 10 a.m. to noon, with only one 10-minute break ordered by Judge Codilla to calm Gemma down.
Cross-examination was also held at 2:30 p.m. yesterday but defense lawyers Flavio Cordero Jr. and Honorato Hermosisima asked to defer the proceedings. They were unable to locate an affidavit they wanted to present as an annex.
The first prosecution witness, Edgar Ongue, was presented last June 3. Amorro, who was supposed to be a primary witness, was murdered last February.
Both Amorro and Ongue were riding with Damalerio when two men fired at them.
Surveillance
Ongue, during his direct examination last Friday, identified Wapille as the gunman.
Gemma, when she took the witness stand yesterday, identified him as one of the two men who’d been observing their house hours before the shooting. He was one of the two men she had tried to warn her husband about.
Wapille, under Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) custody, attended yesterday’s trial and, after being identified by Gemma, confirmed his identity for the record.
He has pleaded not guilty. During the pre-trial stage, he said the PNP in Pagadian City has filed a murder case against another suspect in the Damalerio killing.
Gemma, during her direct examination, narrated how she immediately went to the Mendero Medical Center. She passed by the crime scene and noticed that her husband’s jeep was still there, with nobody guarding the site to preserve the evidence.
Policeman
At the hospital, she said she was immediately told that she’d come too late.
Amorro was among the first to meet her in the hospital and, before she could say anything, he said a policeman was behind the shooting.
It was Amorro who told her that he and Ongue were with Damalerio when the shooting transpired and that it was only by sheer luck that they’d survived.
She said she tried to talk to Ongue but he avoided her for some reason.
She brought Damalerio’s body back to her house the day after. Among her first visitors was Amorro, who narrated how he heard over the local RMN station that the police had cracked the case and that a certain Ronnie Kilme was identified as the shooter.
She said Amorro did not believe the report and called it a police “whitewash.”
Fall guy?
She recalled him as expressing his intent to contact the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in Zamboanga City to give a statement.
On the same day, Gemma said, a Pagadian City policeman, PO2 Orlyn Leyte, arrived and asked her to sign a pro-forma complaint sheet against Kilme.
She refused. She was convinced Amorro was right.
She revealed that she, at that time, did not know who the shooter was. But she continued to refuse to sign a police complaint although PO2 Leyte kept coming back for her signature until the 15th, when Leonard Carpiso of the NBI arrived and narrated that the NBI was already taking cognizance of the case because Amorro had approached them.
It was only then that Ongue broke his silence and identified the gunman as Wapille, his neighbor in Pao, San Pablo, Zamboanga del Sur.
Grave misconduct
She narrated that this was why Ongue was initially avoiding her. He was scared.
Acting City Prosecutor Nicolas Sellon, who handled Gemma’s direct examination with Assistant City Prosecutor Dixon Fuentes, submitted to court the 2003 decision of the Office of the PNP chief, which found Wapille administratively guilty of “grave misconduct (murder).”
That decision, signed by former PNP chief Hermogenes Ebdane Jr., said Wapille’s denial “cannot overcome the positive statements of the eyewitnesses.” The policeman was “found guilty as charged and meted the penalty of dismissal from police service, with forfeiture of all benefits and disqualification from any public office.” (KNR)
(June 9, 2005 issue)
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