Tuesday, November 07, 2006 Suspect, uncuffed, sneaks out of palace
A SUSPECTED thief gave police the slip inside a crowded Palace of Justice yesterday, bolting from his captors while pretending to go to the comfort room.
Teodoro Paray, palace guards said, ran to the second floor of the four-story building and may have used the newly installed fire escape to run off.
Paray, 45, was being taken to the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor at the ground floor for the filing of a theft complaint.
Assistant City Prosecutor Fernando Gubalane, in an interview, said Paray and his common-law wife Mary Chris Buenavists allegedly stole certain items from the SQM Marketing, a shop in downtown Cebu City.
They were the suspects in the loss of more than P200,000 worth of SIM packs from the shop last Nov. 2.
Buenavista worked at the establishment.
Romeo Jamaybay, head guard at the Palace of Justice, said they were informed of Paray’s escape minutes after it happened. He immediately ordered for both the entrance and exit doors of the palace closed.
Palace guards and even marshals from the Witness Protection Program joined in looking for Paray all over the building. But Paray was nowhere to be found.
Based on Jamaybay’s investigation, Paray was not in handcuffs when taken to the City Prosecutor’s Office.
Paray and Buenavista were escorted to the second floor of the courts. It was there that the Theft and Robbery Section operatives lost Paray.
Buenavista admitted to the theft when she went back to work last Nov. 3. She and Paray were immediately arrested, but she later told police that Paray planned the whole thing.
The theft complaint was filed but was subsequently withdrawn after Paray’s elder sister said she was willing to pay for the cost of the stolen items.
The shop owner, in turn, agreed to sign an affidavit of desistance and drop the matter altogether.
Gubalane said Paray bolted after the sister, as a condition to her footing the bill, required that Paray be taken to a drug rehabilitation center.
This is not the first time a suspect bolted from jailers at the Palace of Justice.
In November last year, a 40-year-old man charged with a drug-related offense gave his custodians the slip on their way back to jail from a court hearing.
Arnold Abellana, of Spolarium St., Barangay Duljo-Fatima, Cebu City, simply told his security escort, SJO2 Panfilo Aligato, that they drop by his house in Duljo Fatima so he could ask for money from his mother.
Aligato agreed.
But as they got to Sitio Plastikan in Duljo-Fatima, Abellana asked that Aligato remove his handcuffs. Abellana ran away as soon as the cuffs came off.
Four years before that, also in November, a barangay councilor who had just then been convicted of rape made a similar attempt and got shot for his trouble.
Renulfo Ortiz was free for about 20 seconds. Jail guards recaptured him bleeding on board a passenger jeepney near the junction of V. Rama Ave. and M. Velez St., Cebu City.
His son, Pericles, also got hit in the stomach when he tried to wrestle one of his father’s escorts. (KNR/JST)
