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DAVAO CITY: A block-time broadcast journalist earlier tagged as a
principal suspect in the fatal shooting of a fellow broadcaster on
Christmas eve last year, gave himself up to face the murder charges
leveled on him, reported the Philippine News Agency on Sunday.
Nilo Larosa, a block-timer at radio dxGO here,
did not wait for the police to serve him the warrant for his arrest,
in connection with the fatal shooting of Fernando “Batman”
Lintuan.
Accompanied by his lawyer and a few of his
friends, Larosa surfaced before the sala of Judge Renato Fuentes of
the regional trial court Branch 17 here, shortly before 5 o’clock
Friday.
Consequently, Fuentes issued an order for
Larosa’s commitment to the Davao City Jail, where he would be
detained without bail.
As this develop, Lawyer Ramon Edison Batacan,
who is representing the accused, served notice that he will be
filing a petition for Larosa to post a bail bond, arguing that the
evidence of the prosecution is insufficient to deprive Larosa’s
right to bail.
However, Lawyer Jofre Saniel,
prosecutor-on-case, is set to block Larosa’s plea for bail,
asserting that the evidence against him is strong.
It will be recalled that a 15-year-old
eyewitness tagged Larosa as the gunman who killed Lintuan inside the
victim’s vehicle around 9:30 in the morning on December 24, 2007.
But Larosa denied the charges, claiming that in
spite of an old grudge between them, which had been amicably
settled, he had no reason to kill Lintuan.
Larosa claimed that authorities could have used
him as a fal-guy in a bid to get the reward money put up by Mayor
Rodrigo Duterte and House Speaker Prospero Nograles for those who
could provide the information leading to the solution of Lintuan’s
murder.
Larosa was arrested in January 2008 in a raid
conducted by agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) by
virtue of a search warrant issued by the court for illegal
possession of firearms.
But in an NBI line-up, the 15-year-old witness
positively identified Larosa as the one who shot Lintuan.
Since then, the boy has been placed under the
witness protection program.
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