Police find a cave, which was made a drug den as several drug paraphernalia were found inside. | CDN Digital file photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Police in Central Visayas are pursuing a former police officer, who escaped after he and his cohorts engaged lawmen in a shootout during an anti-illegal drug operation in Cordova town on October 9.
Two were killed in that incident and two were arrested, but former Police Master Sergeant Lowell “Boyet” Pacolaga managed to escape pursuing police officers by swimming into a mangrove area where his pursuers lost him.
Police Brigadier General Debold Sinas said in a press briefing on October 11 that Pacolaga, who was once assigned in the City Intelligence Branch of the Lapu-Lapu City Police Office (LLCPO), went on absent without official leave (AWOL) in 2016 after he learned that his name was already in the watchlist of police officers allegedly involved in the illegal drug trade.
“Pacaloga is in the watchlist. This is the reason why he went AWOL,” said Sinas.
Read: 2 dead, two nabbed in Cordova drug bust; two others, one a rogue cop, hunted
The police are now tracing the whereabouts of Pacaloga and Sinas said he might be found soon.
Nonetheless, Sinas said that the case against Pacolaga and the four other suspects in the Cordova buy-bust would soon be filed so that a warrant of arrest against Pacolaba would be released.
Meanwhile, the PRO-7 officials continue to find the link between the suspects caught and killed in the drug bust in Cordova and where they fit in the matrix of the drug trade in Cebu and the region.
Police Colonel Roderick Mariano, Cebu Provincial Police Office (CPPO) director, said that Pacaloga had been in the Provincial watchlist for a long time now and he was one of the suspected sources of drugs in the province.
The PRO-7 said that catching Pacaloga could hopefully cut a significant part of the drug trade in the province and stop the distribution of illegal drugs in the market.
Another man, one of alleged cohort of Pacolaga, who also escaped during the Cordova encounter, had remained unidentified. /dbs