COP SLAY SUSPECT FALLS

BEHIND BARS. Felix Taytayan, who allegedly confessed to killing PO1 Mae Sasing, covers his face as he sits inside the detention cell of Station 3 of the Mandaue City Police Office.
(CDN PHOTO/LITO TECSON)

Police are inched closer into finding justice for the ambush-slay of PO1 Mae Sasing with the man believed to have pulled the trigger on the policewoman now behind bars.

Elements from the Mandaue City Police Office (MCPO) arrested Felix Taytayan while he was in hiding in Barangay Kaungkod, Madridejos town on Bantayan Island at around 10 a.m. on Friday.

Taytayan, 31, is now detained at the police station in Mandaue City while murder charges were set to be filed against him this morning at the Mandaue City Prosecutor’s Office, said Senior Supt. Roberto Alanas, MCPO chief.

Alanas said Taytayan admitted to having killed Sasing because of a personal grudge.

Alanas said they initially kept the information of his arrest under wraps until they had recovered evidences that would link him to the crime.

He said the suspect had known Sasing since their college days as criminology students because they went to the same university in Cebu City.

Crime of passion

Alanas, in a separate interview on Sunday night, however, revealed that the killing of Sasing was a “crime of passion.”

He declined to elaborate except to say that the messages linking the suspect to Sasing’s killing were all found in the policewoman’s mobile phone.

The suspect is currently detained at Police Station 3 in Barangay Jagobiao, Mandaue City.

The police station was also secured by Special Weapons and Tactics team (SWAT) personnel of LCPO, since Sasing’s ambush-slay is considered a high-profile case.

The suspect’s siblings and some relatives accompanied him from Madredijos to Police Station 3 in Mandaue City.

Taytayan’s brother and a sister who refused to be named said they were alarmed when policemen came barging into their home on Friday and were shocked upon learning he was a suspect in Sasing’s killing.

Taytayan was a criminology graduate in 2008 and was applying to become a policeman. He also took nautical courses at University of Cebu and is now on apprenticeship, according to Alanas.

At the wake of Sasing in Barangay Jugan, her parents and siblings confirmed that Taytayan was her boyfriend during their college days but their relationship has long ended.

Sasing’s mother Virginia, in an interview on Sunday, recalled that when Sasing’s daughter was four years old in 2014, the policewoman once mentioned that she met a former classmate who was named Taytayan.

As far as they know, Taytayan recently began courting her anew but Sasing only treated him as a friend.

Sasing had a live-in partner, the father of her now seven-year-old daughter, who is tending to his family’s farmland in Palawan. Sasing’s partner, who would usually return to Consolacion three times each year, arrived over the weekend.

Pursuing the other suspect

Alanas, meanwhile, said that witnesses accounts and information gathered during their investigation into the shooting incident, which happened on the eve of All Souls’ Day, pointed at Taytayan as Sasing’s killer.

Police continue their hot pursuit operation against the driver of the motorcycle which Taytayan used when he allegedly shot Sasing.

Initial investigation by MCPO operatives showed that Taytayan tailed Sasing after she left the headquarters of the City Public Safety Company (CPSC) of the Lapu-Lapu City Police Office (LLCPO), where she was assigned, in the evening of November 1.

Sasing, 31, was driving her motorcycle on her way home to Barangay Jugan in Consolacion town, when two men riding in tandem on a motorcycle believed to have been tailing her since she left Lapu-Lapu City inched closer to her when she reached Mandaue City sometime around 7 p.m.

The riding-in-tandem suspects drove alongside Sasing near the vicinity of Consuela Village in Barangay Basak, Mandaue City.

The back rider, whom police later identified to be Taytayan after he matched the witnesses’ description of the shooter, reportedly fired shots hitting Sasing at the back of her body and at the back of her head, which caused her to fall from her motorcycle.

Some witnesses brought Sasing to the new Chong Hua Hospital at the North Reclamation Area in Mandaue City, but her attending physicians had declared her dead on arrival.

The gunman and his driver, meanwhile, fled towards northern Cebu, police said, quoting witnesses accounts.

Sasing left behind a seven-year-old daughter with her live-in partner. Her remains now lie in wake at her family’s residence with interment set on November 12 at the Cebu Memorial Garden in Liloan town, also in northern Cebu.

Her parents, both in their sixties, and her four siblings have all demanded justice for her senseless death.

Her two older sisters, Laarne Sasing Herbias and Geraldine Diamada, earlier said they could not understand as to why she was killed since she had no known work-related enemies. While the policewoman and some of her siblings had a legal dispute with neighbors, they did not think this was enough basis to have her killed.

Closed case

Alanas said that members of Task Group Sasing traveled to Madridejos town on Bantayan Island early on Friday to arrest Taytayan.

Alanas said Taytayan is a native of Madridejos town but went to a Cebu City university, where he met Sasing.

The team led by Police Supt. Bernouli Abalos boarded the Mahindra and a leased van, which they used as service vehicle, into a roll-on, roll-off vessel from the Hagnaya port in San Remigio town to Sta. Fe town.

From there, they traveled a distance of about 15 kilometers to get to Madridejos town where Taytayan, who did not resist arrest, was hiding.

Alanas said he now considered the murder of Sasing as a closed case with the arrest of her assailant.