Monday, September 10, 2007 2 bolt from 'deserted' station
BEFORE picking the lock to their detention cell, two inmates made sure no one heard the noise they were to make by first calling out to the policemen on duty at the top of their lungs.
They yelled “Sir” 10 times before opening the padlock when no one responded around 2:30 a.m. Saturday.
Carcar City policemen would not have known how Arvin Perdigan Nacua, 24, and Dionisio Cerenio Bedina, 30, escaped if not for an intoxicated man detained for “safekeeping.”
Yelling
Desiderio Abacena, 49, said he woke up and heard the two inmates yelling for the policemen from the detention cell door’s railings.
He was in the same cell, kept there for the night so he would sober up.
He said that since nobody came to check why the two inmates were shouting, they began picking the lock.
And before fleeing, they made sure no one really noticed by shouting for the policemen again.
Abacena said that when Nacua and Bedina left, he decided to go home as well because he was already feeling better.
He would have been released in the morning, anyway.
Nacua was arrested for allegedly attempting to rob a gasoline station cashier; while Bedina, a farmer, had two bench warrants issued by Carcar’s court.
PO1 Remido Villaraiz, Carcar Police Station desk officer, told Sun.Star Cebu that the operatives on duty that night had their hands full and failed to notice the prisoners leaving.
He said there was an alarm that they responded to in Barangay Ocaña. A hit-and-run was also reported and that they had to set up a roadblock to catch the culprit.
Villaraiz said the jail padlock remained intact, which is why they believed the escaped inmates merely picked the lock.
Under investigation
Cebu Provincial Police Office (CPPO) Director Carmelo Valmoria went to the police station last Saturday and reportedly ordered SPO3 Jonas Pananganan, acting police chief, to submit an investigation report.
Villaraiz said all personnel on duty that time, including designated jailer SPO1 Oscar Cantang and team leader SPO1 Norman Lapena, were under investigation. Lapena’s team spent the night looking for the two escapees, but failed to find them.
Last month, three inmates sawed off a few iron grills of Liloan Police Station’s detention cell and a female Talisay City Police Station inmate left behind in a vehicle escaped while her jailer escorted another inmate to a court hearing. (MEA)
