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Sunday, June 26, 2005
Malilong: Safest place to hide
By Frank Malilong
The Other Side
Would Joel “Tongol” Nodalo have been alive had he not posted bail and stayed in jail instead?
When Jimmy Duarte was “completely neutralized,” Nodalo was advised by his friends to leave Cebu. Duarte had a police record and was in and out of jail. He was the first to fall in a series of unsolved killings involving criminal suspects attributed to an alleged liquidation squad.
Nodalo at that time was a free man although he was facing a string of cases, mostly robbery. He was out on bail (paid for allegedly by Rey Torres, another robbery suspect who is now in the hospital where his leg was amputated following a shootout with the police during his capture in Zamboanga).
Tongol obviously took the advice and decided to cool off in nearby Bohol. Last Thursday, however, a gunman or gunmen (the reports vary) shot Nodalo at close range in a cockpit in a town named quite ironically Buenavista.
As usual, people were quick to conclude that his assassination was another handiwork of the supposed Cebu City liquidation squad. In fact, Tongol’s widow pointed to controversial policeman Adonis Dumpit as her husband’s killer, claiming she recognized his voice when she called Tongol’s cellular phone that the cop allegedly took.
I find the claim almost impossible to believe. I do not think Dumpit, granting for the sake of argument that he was the gunman, would be stupid to answer a call on a phone that many saw he took from the victim. The killer wore a wig to avoid recognition. Why would he give himself away by taking the phone call?
Secondly, Dumpit had just been served with a one-year suspension order from the Office of the Ombudsman in connection with another shooting and since there is no showing that he is suicidal, I doubt that he would travel all the way to Bohol to shoot Nodalo in the presence of so many people and risk facing a more severe punishment.
In any case, the death of Tongol and the others must have brought second thoughts to inmates dreaming of the world outside their prison cells, especially those with cases of illegal drugs and robbery.
There is a faceless and ruthless enemy out there and the safest place to hide from him is, irony of all ironies, jail.
(June 26, 2005 issue)
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