Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Dumpit back soon; Tomas wants to ensure safety
SPO1 Adonis Dumpit will be back in Cebu “soon” following the lifting of his suspension, but Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña wants to take care of his safety first before he comes home.
Osmeña dismissed reports that Dumpit is recovering from gunshot wounds, said to be the reason he left for his hometown in Banganga, Davao Oriental.
“If he were shot, he’ll surely ask for my assistance. I’m his number one patron,” he said.
He heard a similar report last month but the mayor said these are just rumors, “and it’s not my policy to entertain all these tsismis.”
“The suspension may have been lifted but this decision (to return to Cebu) does not have to be made today. We will deal with the issues one at a time. I just want to work out the security problems first,” Osmeña said.
“I told him, ‘relax muna there, I will sort things out first.’ For sure Dumpit will be here soon,” he said.
For their part, Supt. Melvin Gayotin, acting Cebu city police director, and Supt. Pablo Labra II, chief of the Criminal
Investigation and Intelligence Bureau, told the media yesterday that Dumpit is taking a vacation in his hometown Banganga, Davao Oriental.
Gayotin and Labra said Dumpit called them up early last week informing them that he is spending time with his parents in Davao Oriental.
“We are sure about it, he is in Davao,” Labra said.
Based on what Dumpit had informed them, the policeman is tending the farm of his parents.
Dumpit, in a text message sent to Sun.Star Cebu last Sunday, said he will be back in Cebu when his 72-year-old mother gets well. His parents don’t want him to leave yet.
Both Gayotin and Labra, however, could not tell the date when Dumpit left for Davao. The policeman was slapped with a one-year suspension for allegedly shooting a suspect in Pier 4 in August last year.
As to speculations that Dumpit could be the person hit by Alemar Luna in a shooting last July 20 in Barangay Buhisan, Cebu City, Labra said, “it is impossible to connect him because he is in Davao.”
SPO2 Alex Dacua, team leader of the investigators assigned to look into the shooting, in a separate interview yesterday said that they have no way of confirming whether Luna, 39, an ex-convict, was able to shoot back when four men, two of them armed with handguns, attacked him at 8:30 p.m. last July 20, or if it was Dumpit that got shot.
Luna, who once served as the mayor de mayores or governor of inmates at the Bagong Buhay Rehabilitation Center and said to be a member of the Cebu City-based Sparrow Unit, a hit squad of the New People’s Army, survived 14 gunshot wounds. He was released from the hospital last Wednesday.
Dacua said he has sent subpoenas to Luna’s family and other possible witnesses to show up in the investigation.
He, however, lamented that no one is willing to cooperate with the Homicide Section.
Dacua’s team went to Buhisan last Wednesday but was told that Luna is no longer coming back to the barangay.
Labra said the shooting of Luna could be drug-related or a retaliation case considering the latter’s alleged involvement in illegal drugs.
The night before the incident, Labra said he also learned that Luna had slapped at least four members of Alpha Kappa Rho for no apparent reason.
“He has become an irritant in the area,” Labra said.
At City Hall, the mayor assured Dumpit that he will continue to provide for the needs of his family and support him in his legal cases.
Aside from giving Dumpit’s wife a job at the City Hall, Osmeña also gave her one of his pistols for her own protection and is providing her free firearm proficiency training.
(August 16, 2005 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
