MANILA — The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on Monday presented two persons implicated in the 2012 killing of United States Marine George Anikow in Makati City.
Galicano Datu III, 28, and Cripin dela Paz Chong, 34, were apprehended in separate operations on June 12 and 14 in Mandaluyong City and Marikina City, the NBI said.
The two had earlier been convicted of homicide by Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 29 Judge Winlove Dumayas in 2014.
The Supreme Court (SC), in a decision last month, dismissed Dumayas from the service for unduly downgrading the charges from murder to homicide as well as the penalties handed down in the case.
Datu went into hiding at a Mandaluyong condominium with his live-in partner upon learning that an arrest warrant had been issued against him.
Chong, on the other hand, was arrested after a car chase from San Pedro, Laguna to Marikina City. Jimmy Boy David, Datu’s uncle, was arrested for obstruction of justice, the NBI said.
The operations that led to their arrests was carried out with a joint effort by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the US Embassy in Manila, the NBI said.
The two suspects along with two others, Juan Alfonso Abastillas, then 24 and Osric Cabrera, 27, who were subsequently acquitted, figured in a brawl with Anikowin the early morning of Nov. 24,2012 near the gates of the posh Bel-Air Subdivision in Makati City. The serviceman was 41 at the time and a father of three,
Anikow confronted the four, who were on board a Volvo sedan, as they were speaking to a security guard manning the residential area checkpoint.
During the course of the brawl, the four ganged up on Anikow and stabbed the latter in the neck before fleeing. (Benjamin Pulta/PNA)
