Footage of the dashcam in the car of slain prosecutor Mary Ann Castro has been erased except for the part captured after her ambush on Jan. 17.
Her daughter, Annamel Monique Castro Roa, went to radio dyHP to reveal in an interview that footage on Castro's dashcam on the day she was fatally ambushed has been erased.
She was accompanied by her grandmother Helen Castro and uncle Mariven Castro.
Castro was driving her yellow Nissan Juke on the evening of January 17 towards the Capitol area when a man onboard a motorcycle shot her to death.
Roa said that on Thursday, January 31, they approached the Abellana Police Station to pick up her mother's car, cellular phone and planner which were kept under the police custody.
The family claimed the items 14 days after Castro's death.
But Roa was surprised that the dashcam on her mother's car no longer contained footage, including those recorded just before Castro's ambush.
The only remaining footage found in the dashcam were those recorded a day after Castro's ambush, Roa said.
When she asked the police about it, Roa was only told that they didn't touch the dashcam and only checked her mother's planner.
“Of course, we don’t want to ascribe blame but it really is curious because every footage recorded from January 17 and prior to January 17, were no longer found in the dashcam. When in fact we know that she (Castro) would always record her travels whenever she is driving the car," Roa said, in Cebuano.
Roa suspected someone intentionally erased the footage on her mother's dashcam, but she refused to speculate as to who did it.
"Mao ra’g mao na gyud na siya (gi-erase) pero kung kinsa ang nag-erase, lahi na na siya nga matter kay dili man na siya mapanas kung dili nimo hilabtan, ilabi na kay wala may gagamit ato ug supposedly wala pa siya natan-aw sa PNP. So kinsa man ang gatangtang kung matangtang man gyud siya? Kung matangtang siya by itself, ngano man ang January 18 naa pa didto, nga that was also a footage from more than a week ago," Roa said.
Roa is also not sure if the messages on her mother's cellular phone were also erased as she was not able to read them before the ambush.
Roa said she is willing to turn over her mother's dashcam and cellular phone to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to determine if it was tampered or not.
Roa believes that the contents of the dashcam could help in solving her mother's murder as it can record both front and rear of the vehicle and may have caught footage of Castro's last moments.
Castro, 49, was laid to rest in her hometown of Clarin, Misamis Occidental last January 26.
The family decided to mourn privately as this was what Castro wanted.
On the event that she would die unexpectedly, Castro had requested her family that false eyelashes be placed on her dead body as she wanted to "die beautiful." (With AZLG of SuperBalita Cebu)