Monday, November 27, 2006 Gun-for-sale takes spotlight as hearings on murder start
AN alleged murder weapon took center-stage as the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor conducted last Friday the first of a series of clarificatory hearings on the Hernandez-Pancho robbery and homicide case.
Assistant City Prosecutor Patrick Osorio, in an interview yesterday, said issues relating to the firearm, a Taurus 9mm pistol, need to be resolved.
The gun was owned by PO1 Eddiely Fabiaña Malata of the Fuente Police Station.
Malata is not impleaded in the crime, but the PNP Crime Laboratory swears it was the same gun that was used in killing businesswoman Pilar Hernandez and her secretary, Viviana Pancho.
The hearing, Osorio said, was to establish who carried the gun at the time of the crime.
Another hearing has been called for next week. The policeman who was first to arrive at the crime scene, PO2 Jessie Yramis, has been invited to appear.
Malata, during the clarificatory hearing, admitted she owned the gun and tried to have it sold by Troy Diago, one of the station’s “police assets.”
She said she did not know what happened to the firearm after that. But she said she “heard” from Diago that he gave it to PO2 Mateo Yanson, one of the two respondents in the case.
She said it was SPO1 Elmo Yanson Rosales, who is impleaded in the crime, who returned the gun.
Birthday
Yanson, Rosales and Diago are charged for the Sept. 9, 2006 incident inside the PRH Lending Investors Inc. office along T. Padilla Ext.
Hernandez, who celebrated her birthday that day, owned PRH Lending Investors Inc. Most of her borrowers were policemen, including Yanson and Rosales, who are cousins.
Hernandez was hit several times in the chest. She was also stabbed in the nape and died almost immediately.
Pancho was also shot in the chest and suffered wounds in the face but did not expire quite as fast. In fact, the information that led to the filing of the charges against the Yanson came from Pancho.
Before she died, she scrawled the letters Y, A and S on the lower side of her office table and allegedly uttered the word “Anson” to PO2 Yramis who, together with one PO2 Jaime Abella, claimed to have discovered them after the shooting.
Rosales and Diago were impleaded after the police’s discovery of the alleged murder weapon.
According to the investigators, they stumbled across an information that a police asset, Troy Maque Diago, was trying to sell a Taurus 9mm pistol days before the shooting.
They said they obtained the firearm from the owner, PO1 Eddiely Fabiaña Malata of the Fuente Police Station, and subjected it to a ballistic test. They were told by the crime laboratory that it was the same gun used in the shooting.
Cartridges test-fired from the firearm bore markings and rifling that matched those of the slugs and empty cartridges found at the crime scene.
Malata in an affidavit said she entrusted the gun to Diago to sell last August yet because she needed the money.
Diago, for his part, issued an affidavit saying Mateo got the gun from him last Sept. 8, telling him he found a suitable buyer, but returned it last Sept. 10, saying the buyer had lost interest.
Malata said she asked for the gun back when Insp. Henry Biñas, without telling her that the gun had been used in the killing, requested to see it. (KNR)
