Loot to CPPO chief: Probe security officer’s release

Daanbantayan police chief belies claim: No security officer surrendered

Daanbantayan Mayor Vicente Loot is asking the Cebu Provincial Police Office (CPPO) director to investigate the town’s police officers for allegedly releasing the security officer who owned the gun that accidentally fired, wounding Loot in the leg.

Loot made the appeal as he denied allegations from the town police chief that he had been uncooperative in the investigation regarding the accidental shooting incident.

When sought for comment, Senior Supt. Manuel Abrugena, CPPO chief, said he would not comment on the issue.

Loot said in text message to Cebu Daily News that he had ordered the security officer to surrender and cooperate with the police.

“Before I was brought to the hospital in the city (Cebu City). I gave specific instructions to my security officer to voluntarily surrender himself and cooperate with the police. And that, of course, follows that he will also surrender his firearm,” Loot said.

He said that was also the reason the security officer did not accompany him to the hospital.

He said he was planning to file a complaint against the security officer for being lax in handling his firearm, and he was expecting the police to hold the security officer, whom he expected to turnover the firearm involved in the incident.

But Senior Insp. Adrian Nalua, Daanbantayan police station chief, said in a phone interview on Sunday, that there was no Civil Security Officer, who surrendered to the police station after the accidental shooting incident, as Loot claimed.

Nalua said that after the accidental firing happened, he and his deputy chief of police went to the hospital to check on the mayor’s situation and to gather information on what really happened.

He claimed that Loot told him that the firearm was with one of his security aides, who was also then at the hospital.

When Nalua asked the security aide about the firearm, Nalua claimed that the security officer told him that he did not have the firearm and that it was thrown somewhere and he could not find it anymore.

Nalua said he told the mayor about this, and he claimed that the mayor told him to get it from the security officer.

Nalua also said that if Loot had cooperated then the firearm would have been turned over to the police already.

As for Loot, he said that the Scene of the Crime Operatives had already checked the vehicle where the accident happened and had made a trajectory test to find out where the bullet went after the gun was accidentally fired.

He also said that the trajectory test would surely prove that he had been consistent with his statements.

“I did not undergo the paraffin test since I admitted that I felt on the car seat and touched with my left hand the gun that I had sat on, causing it to fire,” Loot said in Cebuano.

Meanwhile, Nalua said that the gun that wounded Loot was probably a .40 caliber revolver after they recovered a slug of the gun near the area where the accidental firing happened.

Nalua said the slug would undergo a ballistic test and then it would be matched with the database of licensed firearms at the Civil Security Unit in Central Visayas (CSU-7).

When the person owning the gun would be identified, then Nalua said they would file a case against him.