GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc, The Philippine Star, Friday, May 2, 2008
Manila cops killed seven men in a shootout last week. Before the smoke could clear the 23 officers thumped their chests, declaring the wipeout of the dreaded Waray-Waray holdup gang. Their chief promptly handed out citations.
Then the truth surfaced. Two of the fatalities were innocent civilians. Sales exec Andy Natividad, 50, and driver Vic Constantino, 30, happened to be at the wrong place, wrong time. Constantino was only pinch-hitting for Natividad’s sick regular driver. And since it was his birthday, Natividad treated him to lunch. The duo was motoring back to work when, on a bridge in Binondo district, cops and robbers in front and behind them shot it out.
Reports are hazy. The first police narrative was that one of the goons shot Natividad and Constantino while trying to commandeer their pickup. Another official account, supposedly from an eyewitness, was that the two had dashed out of the vehicle to escape the crossfire but were shot by the confused robbers. Strangely, the final version was that the bloodied bodies of the two were found slumped in the pickup’s rear seat. The doors and windows were intact with no signs of being forced open; one tire was deflated. The police then supposedly rushed them to the hospital where they both expired.
The police brass said sorry to the families of Natividad and Constantino for calling them gangsters. Wreaths were sent, but Natividad’s mom refused to accept. The victims’ kin doubt the police story, and have good reason to.
Too often has the public been feted to police exploits that later turn out to be bungles. The “neutralizing” of this or that gang with the slaying of seven, eight or nine armed men packed in a five-seater sedan has become routine. Only when kin cry out would cops admit having killed innocent by-standers in the crossfire. In the Natividad-Constantino case, the cops instantly bragged having wasted seven goons and wounding an eighth. But that wounded man, Elizardo Carales, 33, happens to be a market vendor. In short, there were logically only five probable thugs in their car — not eight as the trigger-happy cops made it look like. Natividad’s daughter Carla was reported as saying her dad died from police incompetence.
Then there’s the autopsy report. Natividad’s skull supposedly was crushed. A bullet had entered the top of the forehead and, in downward trajectory, exited the nape. Natividad’s surgeon-cousin Dubarry Sioco, who appears in court as expert medico-legal witness, tries to reconcile that with the three police accounts. “I can’t imagine how Andy was hit,” Sioco says. “He was five feet-eight inches tall. For him to sustain such injury, he must have been kneeling or lying on the ground.” The conflicting police versions do not help any, and could have been written to throw off prying kin like Sioco. “I’m not playing CSI investigator, but common sense tells us there is something sinister in the manner he was shot,” he laments. “Unfortunately there is no witness.”
But the bullets should tell the story. Where are the slugs that killed Natividad and Constantino? Why have these not been subjected to ballistics matching with the firearms of the 23 cops and five gangsters? Such lapses make the public suspect police foul-up.
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Three docs at the Philippine General Hospital wrote to confirm what I wrote Monday — that emergency and inpatients do share one remaining x-ray machine. Wrote one, while requesting anonymity for fear of retribution:
“He listed down 12 functional units. What he didn’t say is that, even with the bucky and fluoroscopy at the Outpatient Department, right now no outpatient x-ray can be taken. He also didn’t say that the portable units in the various ICUs may only be used for ICU patients. He didn’t mention that the two image intensifiers (C-arm) in the OR may only be used inside the OR for surgical procedures. Images are seen only on video monitors, like real-time x-rays. We don’t have the facilities to print out those images. And we have yet to see the digital machines used. So that leaves only the one Central Block portable machine, which can only be used for ER patients. As of Thursday, only two or three intubated ER patients could be accommodated. Those with ‘run-of-the-mill’ open fracture must have their x-rays taken elsewhere.
“PGH direly need funds. But whatever little money we have is being spent on things like a park-cum-Oblation now under construction in front of the hospital, an electronic billboard on the corner of Taft and Padre Faura Streets, a wall-high engraving of names of donors near the elevators, and a mural that includes the faces of ... none of which helps our patients.”
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My piece on PGH’s shortage of hospital and medical equipment also elicited two offers of help. Ed Artis and Vincent Ricasio wrote separately to ask whom they should talk with at the premier state hospital to donate x-rays and more.
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