| CCPO photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) will revisit their security measures, especially the curfew for minors, following the gruesome killing of a 16-year-old scholar on Saturday evening, August 6, 2022, in Barangay Bulacao, Cebu City.
Police Lieutenant Colonel Wilbert Parilla, deputy director for administration of the Cebu City Police Office, said that they were coordinating with Councilor Philip Zafra on what could be the best measure in avoiding similar incidents to happen in the city.
Zafra is the head of the committee on peace and order of the Cebu City Council.
Parilla was referring to the robbery and stabbing incident in Barangay Bulacao last August 6, 2022, where a 16-year-old student-scholar was killed when he fought back against the group, who wanted to take his cellphone from him.
As of this posting, two adult suspects were still at-large while three other suspects — 2 minors and a 22-year-old man — were detained at the Pardo Police Station detention cell after they visited the police station on Sunday, August 7, to deny any involvement in the killing of the scholar.
Police held and detained them because they were considered suspects in the crime and their claims or alibis had yet to be verified by the police.
READ: Scholar, 16, robbed, killed in Cebu City on his father’s birthday
Earlier, Parilla said that one of the suspects provided information that the group had no intention of killing the 16-year-old Jerome Estan.
He said that one of the minor suspects claimed that the at-large suspects — a certain John Lloyd and another cohort — only wanted to take the victim’s cellphone and maul him.
But the victim fought back prompting John Lloyd to allegedly pull out a knife and stab the victim on the chest.
READ: Killing of scholar: It was a ‘trip’ to rob, maul that turned deadly when victim fought back
Parilla said that the suspect who provided the information allegedly claimed that it was only a “trip” or “tripping” of the group, who only fancied robbing and mauling the victim at that time.
He told police that they did not expect John Lloyd to stab the victim when he fought back.
With this incident, the CCPO official said that it would be better to lower the curfew time of minors to 10 p.m. instead of midnight.
Parilla said that the curfew imposed for minors after the easing of major restrictions of COVID-19 was from midnight to 4 a.m.
Estan was robbed and stabbed dead in Bulacao at past 10 p.m. on Saturday, which was still at least a few hours away from the city’s curfew for minors.
Parilla said that police had continued their patrols in the city to make sure that the curfew on minors would be observed.
He said that he had brought this up with Zafra.
READ: Police want curfew to stay in Cebu City
Parilla said that implementing the curfew on minors was not meant to restrict them to go outdoors, but it was a way to ensure their safety especially from perpetrators of crimes.
“Ang pagbutang og curfew, pagamping nis atoang kabatan-unan, pagproteher nga dili sila mahimong biktima ug mahimong salawayon sa atoang katilingban. Dili ni pagpig-ot o pagpugong nila sa ilahang lihok but to protect them,” said the CCPO Deputy director for administration.
(Imposing a curfew is to take care and protect oour children that they will not be victims of crime and they will not become problems of society. This is not to restrict their movements but to protect them.)
“Ato gyud makita nga kung duna gyuy curfew, less gyud ang krimen. Even kaniadto, ato gyud na gipromote sa city even sa adults duna gihapoy curfew kay nakita gyud nato nga zero crime incidents tong naa tay curfew,” he added.
(We can see that if there is a curfew, there are fewer crimes. Even before, we pushed to the city that even adults should have a curfew because we saw that there were zero crime incidents if we have a curfew.)
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