‘Killer’ cop tags ‘masked man’
The policeman charged with murder for shooting Aldrinne Pineda has changed his tune for a third time, alleging that the gunshot that killed the 13-year-old in Tondo, Manila last March came from a “masked man” and not him.
In his June 7 counter-affidavit filed before Assistant City Prosecutor Aquil Ismael, Police Officer 2 Omar Malinao said a first gunshot that he claimed killed Aldrinne came from a “masked man,” according to Pineda’s companion that night.
This was the third time he changed his narrative about the incident last March 2 at a rocky area called Slaughterhouse in Vitas, Tondo. Pineda was hanging out near a hole in a cement wall when the bullet hit him.
When the news broke out of the slain boy in Tondo, Malinao said he only fired a warning shot. After surrendering, he said he tripped on stones and accidentally fired his gun.
In his affidavit, Malinao said that as he was warning a crowd against stealing scrap metal from the construction site, the people threw stones at him, forcing him to take cover.
It was at this point that he claimed to hear the first gunshot, compelling him to bring out his firearm and emerge from his cover.
But just as he was coming out, Malinao said he “unintentionally slipped” on the stones and “accidentally pulled the trigger, which, instead of hitting the boy, “hit a pile of soil debris.”
Malinao quoted the affidavit of Pineda’s playmate, who testified about seeing a tall masked man wearing a white shirt and black pants, who had a firearm and started shooting to disperse the crowd.
The 13-year-old witness had differing testimonies before the police and the Commission on Human Rights.
He told police of a masked man but later told the CHR it was a policeman in civilian uniform who shot Pineda.
Malinao claimed he was wearing the prescribed police uniform at the time and that it was this “masked man” who shot Pineda, not him.
His affidavit and the March 4 incident report he himself wrote also offered different scenarios. Malinao in his affidavit said he tripped after coming out of his cover. His earlier report on the incident said he tripped just as he was about to take cover.
Malinao said he has a witness, electrician Richard Baynosa, who claimed hearing the first gunshot near the metal scraps and a second gunshot near the slaughterhouse.
The slug found near the slaughterhouse, traced to his service firearm, is not enough evidence it was the bullet that killed the boy, he said.
The Pineda family’s lawyer, Hilda Clave, yesterday told The STAR that Malinao’s defense was a complete “360 degree turnaround. Alibi and denial are his best defense.”
Pineda’s father Allan, a Tokhang surrenderee, earlier told The STAR that his son tagged a police officer as the one who shot him that night.
“Pa, binaril ako (I’ve been shot). Pa, pulis,” Allan quoted his son as saying before he was rushed to the Tondo Medical Center.
In the hospital, his family would later learn of another injustice, when Pineda’s kidneys were removed without his parents’ consent.
In an earlier interview with The STAR, Dr. Sa-adi Sacar, the surgeon who operated on Pineda, and Tondo Medical Center chief doctor Maria Isabelita Estrella belied claims of organ harvesting, adding that the kidneys had to be removed to save his life by controling the bleeding. Pineda died before stabilizing for dialysis, they said.