Teen shot and dumped by pigsty
Kian’s death kindles grave concerns among public over Duterte’s war on drugs
MANILA: Philippine teenager Kian Loyd delos Santos told friends he dreamed of becoming a policeman after graduating from high school.
Last week, plainclothes policemen dragged the 17-year-old to a dark, trash-filled alley in northern Manila, shot him in the head and left his body next to a pigsty, according to witnesses whose accounts appeared to be backed up by CCTV footage.
The killing has electrified the Philippines, sparked multiple investigations and galvanised what had previously been limited opposition to President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.
Thousands of people have been killed since he took office 14 months ago.
Police said they shot Kian in self-defence after he opened fire on officers during an anti-drugs operation. But there was outrage when the CCTV footage emerged showing two officers marching a figure, subdued and apparently unarmed, towards the spot where the youth’s body was later found.
Three officers, who police say have been confined to quarters in a Manila police camp, are now defending their actions in a Senate inquiry that began on Thursday. They maintain Kian fired at them.
The teenager’s parents and the Philippines Public Attorney’s Office, a government legal aid agency, have filed murder charges against the policemen at the justice department.
Reuters journalists spoke to at least two dozen witnesses, friends and neighbours of Kian in Manila’s Caloocan area about his killing.
They said he was a kind, popular teenager who liked to joke around and didn’t drink or do drugs.
He was too poor to own a gun, they said.
“We no longer have our joker,” said one of his friends, Sharmaine Joy Adante, 15.
It was after 8pm on Aug 16 when Erwin Lachica, 37, a welder, said he saw three men in civilian clothes enter the area on two motorbikes. All three had handguns tucked into their waistbands, he said.
Lachica recognised them as officers from previous police opera- tions in the neighbourhood. They were later identified as Arnel Oares, Jeremias Pereda and Jerwin Cruz.
According to a police report issued a day after the killing, when the teenager saw officers approaching, he immediately drew a weapon and shot at them. Oares, who led the operation, returned fire and killed him, it said.
“It was dark, he fired at us,” Pereda told the Senate inquiry this week. ”We knew it was a gun, there was a loud sound. We saw a gleam of light.” Police have cited self-defence as the pretext for killing more than 3,500 people in drug-war operations since Duterte came to power.
Lachica had a different version of events. He said Kian was standing outside a shop when the men grabbed him, and then slapped and punched him until he started crying. No gun battle took place, he said.
“He was saying he was innocent, he was not a drug addict,” added Lachica, who said the men put Kian in a headlock and dragged him away.
CCTV footage from a neighbourhood security camera shows two men marching someone, his head bowed, through a nearby basketball court. A third man follows.
The officers told the Senate that they were indeed in the video but were bundling away an informant, not Kian.
Multiple witnesses, however, said they recognised the youth.
One of those witnesses was Victor, a teenage student, who said he knew Kian because he lived in the neighbourhood.
He said the men hustled Kian across the basketball court and down a path to the filthy, floodprone Tullahan River.
Victor dared not follow.
“We were very scared,” he recalled, his eyes filling with tears.
Kian’s life ended in a dark nook next to a disused pigsty by the river. A few paces away, a 39-year-old construction worker called Rene was eating dinner with his two daughters in his home.
First, said Rene, he heard shouting – a man ordering residents to stay inside their houses – then two bursts of gunfire, perhaps 10 shots in all.
Autopsies by the police and the Public Attorney’s Office disagreed on the number of gunshot wounds Kian sustained, but pathologists for both told the Senate that he was kneeling when shot.
“You are not allowed to kill a person that is kneeling down begging for his life. That is murder,” Duterte said in a speech on Wednesday.
Duterte’s supporters have taken to blogs and social media to express support for the police and raise doubts about Kian’s innocence.
But the killing appears to have kindled grave concerns among the public because of the age of the victim and because the videosupported witness accounts of his killing.
It has also fuelled long-standing public anxiety about the drug war’s brutal methods, and could generate wider opposition to a campaign whose critics have so far been largely limited to priests, activists, lawyers and a handful of prominent politicians. — Reuters