Cellphone saves cop’s life

PO1 Demar Muaña thankful for his second life after his old cellphone unit have blocked a bullet that could have penetrated to his chest. He was visited by Senior Supt. Noel Gillamac to extend financial help. (CDN/APPLE MAE TA-AS)

PO1 Demar Muaña would have been dead if not  for an old cellphone in his sling bag.

In a shootout  in Camotes Island, north Cebu, gunshots were fired as policemen were  about to enter a tree house  to arrest  suspected drug  personalities in barangay Sta. Cruz in San Francisco town.

Muaña felt something slam into his chest. A bullet would have pierced his heart but was stoppped by the metal casing of his Samsung E1200 cellphone in the pocket of his bag.

“I thought I was going to die,” he  said in a bedside  interview at Chong Hua Hospital in Cebu City.

Muaña is recuperating from gunshot wounds in the left arm and armpit.

“The cellphone saved my life. I’m lucky,” he said.

Muaña was visited by Senior Supt. Noel Gillamac, chief of the Cebu Provincial Police Director (CPPO), who gave the wounded policeman P30,000 as financial assistance.

Muaña said that he and three other policemen rushed to barangay Santa Cruz last Saturday afternoon after they received reports that suspected drug pushers identified as Alex Otida and Louie Peroso were spotted in the area.

He said that when they arrived in a bushy area, the policemen saw a group of men jump out of  tree houses.

Muana heard a phone ringing in one of the tree houses which the policemen started to climb when shots were fired.

Muaña said he was already wounded when he returned fire.

He said he was forced to jump off the tree house after he ran out of bullets.

Police recovered from the tree house five small packs of suspected shabu, a silencer, a magazine, a barrel of an unknown caliber of firearm, 10 bullets for a 9mm pistol, drug paraphernalia, a mobile phone and a picture of Otida.