‘Do you need a bodyguard?’ Banter, togetherness on their final morning

Pearl Ungab was amused when her husband, Ronda Vice Mayor Jonnah John Ungab, introduced her to the guards of Cebu City Hall of Justice as his lawyer last Monday morning.

Ungab, lawyer of Eastern Visayas “drug lord” Rolando “Kerwin” Espinosa, was in a light mood a few hours before a gunman killed him.

In a press conference yesterday, Pearl asked the public to suspend judgment on her husband, who she said was just doing his job .

Ungab’s mother, Alma, described her son’s death as “barbaric.”

“My son is already gone, so we just ask for justice,” she said. “I forgive the doer of that because I believe God is always with us.”

The couple’s six-year-old daughter Zee, their fifth in a brood of six, relayed a message to the authorities: “Please, arrest the bad guys.”

Two days after Ungab was ambushed just moments after he drove away from the court complex, his family called a press conference to appeal for more witnesses to speak up and to answer questions about their loved one.

Pearl asked: “Is it a crime to help any person who asks for legal assistance? Is it his fault that he always gave his best in court and came out as a better lawyer than the other side? When does excellence in the performance of your duty to the community be- come a crime?”

Before they arrived in the courtroom inside the Qimonda Building in Cebu City last Monday, Pearl recalled, she prayed for their safety. “I was not really used to going with him to the court,” said Pearl.

On the same day, before they went to court, Ungab received a threatening text message, telling him to choose his life or his client’s.

“He never hesitated to put his client in another vehicle and he chose to ride with me. He had no bodyguard, no guns, no protection of some sort to at least be safe,” Pearl said.

Espinosa, on the other hand, was guarded by agents of the National Bureau of Investigation.

Ungab had received threats in the past, but some were scams perpetrated by people who wanted money from the lawyer, his wife said.

“He always traveled without any sort of protection from threats. Why would he? Because deep inside, he was just fulfilling his duties as a servant of the law. He didn’t steal, proliferate drugs, use drugs or hurt anyone.”

A few days earlier, Ungab informed Pearl about the promulgation of Espinosa’s cases in the sala of Regional Trial Court Judge Generosa Labra. He then asked his wife to go with him.

Pearl joked, “Ngano man? Kinahanglan ka’g bodyguard? (Why? Do you need a bodyguard?).”

Task Force Ungab of the Cebu City Police Office will hold its second case conference tomorrow on the ambush of lawyer Jonnah John Ungab.

“Ikaw may prayer warrior ni Kerwin (You’re Kerwin’s prayer warrior),” Ungab replied.

“I told him, ‘Up to now si Kerwin ra gihapon imong gihunahuna (You’re still thinking of Kerwin)?’” But she agreed to go with him because he was serious in his plea. It was the second time Ungab brought his wife with him while he went to work. The first time happened when Ungab was attending a Senate inquiry, to which Kerwin Espinosa had been summoned late in 2016.

Ungab is survived by Pearl and their six children, ages 20, 16, 12, 9, 6 and 2. He was 44.

A picture captioned “Of tidy clouds and dirt shoes” and posted by Ungab on Facebook last Saturday made Pearl cry, and she thought in hindsight that her husband must have had a premonition about his death.

“John helped a lot of people. He equally treated everyone with respect and kindness,” she said.