Police ask gun owners to refrain from firing

Police officials are asking gun owners to refrain from firing their firearms during the New Year's celebration even as they admitted that it is very difficult to trace the identities of persons who fire their guns to celebrate the New Year.

" Lisud g'yod kaayo i-trace kon kinsa ang nagpabuto og armas gawas lang kon dunay witness nga motug-an og moabag sa imbistigasyon," said Superintendent Paul Labra II, chief of the Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Branch of the Cebu City Police Office.

Some police officials in Cebu are employing a scheme that would make it easy to determine whether their men fire their issued guns during the revelry by placing adhesive seals with signatures that are stuck over the muzzle of the guns.

If the seal breaks, it means that the gun was fired. Once the gun is fired, the holder is placed under investigation.

But aside from police and soldiers, there are thousands of civilians in Cebu who own licensed and unlicensed firearms, excluding the barangay tanods.

Labra said one of the steps to trace the origin of a stray bullet is to find out the victim's position when he was hit. Through the trajectory of the bullet, investigators may be able to have an idea of where the bullet came from.

"Kon ang bala nga makaigo sa biktima padulong na gani sa ubos, daku ang posibilidad nga ang nagpabuto diha ra sa duol mga 300 metros," Labra explained.

The police may ask the identified firearm holders in that place to surrender their guns so these could be subjected to a ballistic test.

One of the victims of stray bullets in the city was five-year-old Caroline Tolentino, a daughter of a taxi driver whose house is located just across the gate of a hotel in Lahug.

Caroline sat on a roadside gutter across the hotel's gate waiting for her father shortly before midnight of December 31, 1997 when she was hit by a stray bullet. She died three days later at the Perpetual Succor Hospital.

A witness surfaced and revealed how the hotel's security guard Ronald Juntilla fired his service handgun moments before the stray bullet hit Caroline.

But the case that was filed against Juntilla did not prosper after assistant city prosecutor Vidal Gella, who later became a judge, dismissed the complaint for lack of basis.

Gella said it was not certain that the slug recovered from Caroline came from Juntilla's firearm. The case was referred back to the CIIB for further investigation. - Rene U. Borromeo/LPM