With their chief on leave, Fuente station policemen are doing their own investigation into the death of an 11-year-old child beggar.
They have another suspect in mind: the child’s step father, a trisikad driver.
Their theory is that Chastity Mirabiles was beaten up at home in barangay Calamba and not at the Fuente station.
They approached a barangay Sambag 2 councilor yesterday to get his official statement that the child’s grandfather first asked for help because he suspected the little girl’s step-father had mauled her.
Separate teams of the Fuente police and the City Investigation and Detection Management Branch (CIDMB) went to the Sambag barangay hall yesterday afternoon to get the affidavit of barangay councilor Ryan Aznar.
READ: NBI-7 steps into probe of child beggar’s death
Fuente Police headed by Insp. Sheila Gurtiza, officer-in-charge, and SPO1 Richard Catacutan, will be preparing the affidavit together with statements of two ambulance nurses who responded to the alarm when Chastity collapsed on the street on April 6 .
Aznar said he was approached by the child’s grandfather Renato Mirabiles to ask what happened to Chastity.
“He needed help to draft a letter request to the NBI for autopsy so I referred him to our nurse,” he told Fuente police investigators.
He said Mirabiles told him of his suspicion that Chastity was mauled at home by 29-year-old Mario Buyoc, live-in partner of his daughter Noemi.
The couple have been living together for the past six years, he said. Chastity was 5 years old at the time.
Minutes after Fuente police came, the CIDMB team arrived led by Chief Insp. Aileen Recla for a separate inquiry.
SPO1 Catacutan was the policeman whom Noemi told reporters had talked to her at the Calamba barangay hall with Chief Inspector Widemar Tiu present, a day after her daughter’s funeral, offering to pay her to settle the case.
Catacutan yesterday denied this account, saying it was just a ruse to damage the leadership of Tiu.
“We will establish the truth because our name is at stake. Our police officers are suffering low morale. We have to clean up the matter that that accusation is is not true,” said Catacutan.
Catacutan said the stepfather Buyoc is one of the suspects because of his “proximity” to the child, who lives in the same household.
He said Buyoc was arrested before for stabbing a member of the PROBE demolition team after his trisikad was confiscated for a traffic violation.
READ: NBI autopsy confirms Chastity a victim of violence
This proves that Buyoc has “manifestations of violence” he said.
In a separate interview, Buyoc said he never laid a hand on Chastity.
The grandfather Renato admitted that he first thought of the step-father as the culprit but changed his mind after finding out Chastity was picked up by the police the day before she died.
“Wa ko nagduda kay wa man ko kahibaw nga nadakpan ni siya sa station 2,” said Renato. (I no longer have doubts about him after I knew that Chastity was picked up by Fuente police.) But he admitted that his daughter Noemi was a “battered” partner of Buyoc at home.
Yesterday, Noemi and her father Renato visited the WCPD office in Camp Sotero Cabahug to execute affidavit to support the filing of a complaint.
Otida said this will be part of the evidence attached to the filing of an administrative case for violation of Memorandum Circular 2007-001, a violation to the Special Law tantamount to grave misconduct.”
The maximum sanction is dismissal from police service, she said.
READ: Fuente chief on vacation