IN retrospect,
it should not have come as a surprise.
PO2 Herminio Paredes’ feelings were mixed at this point – sadness,
emptiness but mostly rage. Sadness because the perpetrator of his brother’s
death was still at large. Emptiness because big bro Antonio was the only sibling
he had and he had looked up to him most of his life as his protector. Now he was
gone. Gone in a single second when a lone criminal detonated a
crudely-fashioned mortar bomb at Limketkai’s Rosario Strip on a busy Friday
night. And then there was the rage. Right at this very moment while the coffin
of his kuya’s body was slowly lowered
six feet under at Divine Shepherd Memorial Gardens, PO2 Paredes was pretty sure
he would make the perp pay for his sin – at a very painful and most demeaning
price.
--
The Macapagal
ancestral house along the highway in Iligan City was teeming on this busy
Sunday afternoon. But not everyone there were tourists. Two in the crowd were
22-year-old Angelo Palacios and 21-year-old Alan Salgados. Angelo was orphaned
at 11 when both his parents from Panaon, Misamis Occidental died in a road
accident along with his lolo and lola. With no other kin back in Panaon, Angelo
wandered for days until he reached Ozamiz City and befriended a kid who slept
at street sidewalks at night. That other kid was Alan. They grew up as teens
introduced to the life of crime – first snatching parked bikes, then graduated
to robbing unsuspecting students at Medina College.
This afternoon,
they were searching for potential targets at the Macapagal ancestral house.
They found one – an Irish pensioner who had lived in Iligan for almost a year
now with his 24-year-old Pinay partner. On this lazy afternoon, 64-year-old
Michael Birmingham parked his gray Grandia and was looking forward to a typical
picnic day, not having a slightest forethought of the fuckup ahead.
--
Dosed with
antibiotics on his heydays for a pharyngeal infection, Michael had a knack of
forgetting things. On this particular moment, he left the Grandia key on the
ignition and to double the incredulity, he forgot to lock the van. This was lechon for the two petty criminals – Angelo
and Alan. The duo went for the van, got inside and slowly drove away. It was at
that instant that Michael looked back. To his disbelief, someone was carnapping
his Grandia. He went for his gun hidden in his clutch bag and pointed it ahead.
Angelo and Alan panicked and stepped on the pedal more firmly, running east
towards Cagayan de Oro. Michael picked up his cellphone and dialed the Iligan
City Police Office. In his recurring forgetfulness, he forgot to tell police
the license plates of his van. Within four minutes, checkpoints were set up in Lugait and Manticao. Gray Grandias are
common in Mindanao. With no specific license plates to look for, police
officers manning the checkpoints had to stop every gray-colored Toyota Grandia
coming from the west.
--
At exactly the
same time when the carnapping occurred, Achmed Bashir was driving down Amai
Pakpak Avenue from Marawi City exiting towards Iligan City and on to Cagayan de
Oro in a similarly-looking gray Toyota Grandia van he rented. This was his
third change of vehicle since the July 26 bombing at Limketkai which left eight
people dead. Although the plate of the first pickup truck he used as the
getaway vehicle before the blast was not captured on CCTV camera, Achmed left
nothing to chance. This, despite the fact that all those computerized facial
sketches the police released were of no use anyway because of contradicting
descriptions of witnesses who were already tipsy and drunk that night.
Achmed owed the
rent of the vehicles – and the money he used to buy the explosives – to someone
whose family he saved literally from a fire way way back. It was now time for
the family to pay back. For days, Achmed
was both furious and desperate at the same time. With his family residing at
Vamenta Subd., Barra, Opol, the only means of sending his kids to school was
the sidewalk stall he had alongside JR Borja St. in Cogon. For nine years, he
had fed his family that way. Then in one single snap, the Hapsay Dalan campaign
snatched that away from him.
There was
nowhere to turn for help except the family who owed him their lives when he
saved them from an inferno which donned their house in 1994. That family was
luckier. Their patriarch was now vice mayor of Malabang town. Sensing his
friend’s fate, Vice Mayor Ameril Lucman offered Achmed a job at the town hall
and gave him seed money to temporarily relocate his family to Malabang.
Achmed politely
declined the job but accepted the money. But unknown to the vice mayor, Achmed
did not use it to relocate. He did not want to stay in Malabang. Hell, he did
not want his family to stay in Malabang. He loved Cagayan de Oro. He missed his
daily ukay-ukay at the sidewalks of
Cogon which were downloaded to him by smugglers via Cebu. In fact, he owned
more than one stall. He wanted them back.
--
In nine years in
the ukay-ukay business, Achmed should
presumably had savings by now and didn’t need Vice Mayor Lucman’s financial
help. But Achmed had no cash on hand. He invested everything in a trust fund
for his two sons and two daughters who are all in private schools. That’s why
he needed Lucman’s money. Unfortunately for Lucman, he had no clue on how
Achmed used the money. The original plan was for one attack only. But no, they
were stubborn. They still didn’t allow him back at Cogon. So here Lucman was on
a Sunday afternoon, carrying with him the second 81mm mortar round freshly
smuggled from Camp Ranao by a corrupt military officer of the 103rd
Infantry Brigade who knew his way how to doctor inventories.
--
Achmed was
surprised to see the checkpoint at Lugait. And it was a Sunday afternoon at
that! The checkpoint was not there when he hurriedly left Cagayan de Oro in the
morning of July 27. But he kept calm as two police officers approached.
“What’s this
about?” he asked in Cebuano.
“Naa lang mi tan-awon sir,” one of the
officers replied.
The other saw
the package at the back and it deemed to him suspicious enough. Achmed was
arrested.
--
PO2 Paredes was
on duty at the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office in Camp Maharlika when news of
the apprehension of the Limketkai bomber at Lugait came. Of course, they were
pretty sure it was the bomber. He had with him a raw 81-mm mortar round. PO2
Paredes was excited but kept his calm. As next-of-kin to one of the victims, he
knew he could not be allowed to be part of the interrogation process. He knew
that he would not be allowed to get close to the suspect, not one bit.
--
After all the
media people were gone, Cocpo director Senior Supt. Graciano Mijares ordered
his personnel to lock Bashir up all by himself in an abandoned room at the
second level of Camp Maharlika main building, meters away from the director’s
office. He said Achmed Bashir must be kept away from other inmates because his
was an extraordinary case. Since it was a Sunday, the arraignment at the City
Prosecutor’s Office had to wait for one more day. Satisfied, director Mijares
went home after posting two guards outside Bashir’s detention room.
--
While the press
conference was going on, PO2 Paredes sneaked out of Maharlika and went to
nearby Madonna and Child Hospital. There at the pharmacy, he purchased over the
counter an IV needle. In front of Madonna was a carinderia. PO2 Paredes asked
the carinderia attendant if she could give him a bottle of pork residue.
Although perplexed, the carinderia attendant heeded PO2 Paredes’ request.
--
It was already
7:45 p.m. and it was a Sunday so only a few police officers were milling about
at Maharlika. PO2 Paredes’ duty of the day was about to wrap up. But he had one
more duty to do – a duty he felt he owed to his late brother, someone he looked
up to more than anyone else in this world.
PO2 Paredes went
upstairs to the second level of the main building in Camp Maharlika complex.
The two police officers guarding the door where Bashir was locked up confronted
him.
“You’re not
supposed to be here,” one of them said.
“Yes I wasn’t
supposed to,” PO2 Paredes shot back, then in quick lightning fashion, knocked
the two officers cold.
He went for the
key, opened the door and found Achmed Bashir comfortably sleeping.
First, he bolted
the door from the inside, found an abandoned filing cabinet in the room and
pushed it towards the door.
Then he cuffed
Bashir to the side railing of the bed which woke him up.
“What the…”
Bashir started but PO2 Paredes hit him.
“Shut up! Do you
know what this is?” PO2 Paredes said while showing the bottle of pork residue
to Bashir.
With a penchant
for knowledge, Achmed Bashir knew from watching TV and browsing the Internet of
the horrors of torture that authorities implemented abroad. He had watched
pictures of Iraqi prisoners being masturbated by American servicewomen and
smacked of human feces after. He had heard of waterboarding in CIA camps
elsewhere. He had known of detainees being forced-fed in Guantanamo. But
nothing prepared him for what would happen.
Kicking in
protest while being strapped to his bed, Bashir watched in horror as PO2
Paredes filled the IV needle that he had just bought with 4 mL of pork residue
and injected it at Bashir’s arm.
It hit the mark.
It hit the mark.
“That’s for my
brother,” PO2 Paredes said while the greasy oil entered Bashir’s blood veins.
That dense liquid wouldn’t go anywhere except flow to the heart. The heart
would then pump it to the lungs for gas exchange but that could not happen
because the blood had been replaced with oil. Even 1 mL alone was lethal
enough.
In pain and
disorientation, Bashir was coughing profusely as the oil stuck in his lungs.
Momentarily, his heart was desperately gasping for air. It took four minutes
for Bashir to succumb to cardiac arrest.
--
It took another
four minutes for PO1 Jenny Ubanan to find her fiancée police officer and his
buddy knocked cold outside Bashir’s detention room. Panicking, she called for
help. More police officers responded and started banging the door – already
barricaded from the inside with an empty filing cabinet.
--
PO2 Paredes did
not want to get caught. Remaining single all of his life with only his brother
as his idol and role model after both his parents went on their separate ways
and left the two siblings alone, PO2 Herminio Paredes felt like he wanted to
join Antonio in the afterlife. He pulled up his .45 caliber pistol and pointed
it to his temple - unknowingly, in a slightly downward angle. That’s where he
made a mess.
--
There are many
studies that have shown that in their moment of despair, suicides show a slight
hint of hesitation at what would happen. That occurred to then Congressman
Benjo Benaldo. His pistol was also pointed downward that’s why the bullet
missed his heart.
--
PO2 Paredes
pulled the trigger. Had the pistol been pointed straight, Herminio would have
died instantly. But since it was pointed downward, the bullet hit the right
cheekbone, traveled through the sinus cavity and exited at the left cheek. PO2
Paredes was flailing wildly in pain as the door kept banging from the outside.
It took four minutes for PO1 Ubanan and the responding police officers to
finally loose the door free. It also took four minutes for PO2 Paredes to choke
on his own blood and die.
Four minutes.
Few things can happen in four minutes. Or a lot.
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